This is the first post of my new blog, and I wanted to outline some of the plans I have for my carbon emissions reduction experiment.
The last few days have been spent researching the topic, mainly through the internet, in order to give me inspiration. Based on this research, it seems that most carbon reduction initiatives go something along the lines of:
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Monitor your energy usage to understand which activities make the greatest contribution to your carbon footprint
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Use this learning to take action to reduce your energy usage
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Offset your emissions where physical reduction is not possible
I’m going to focus initially on the first two activities – I’m not convinced about offsetting at the moment, it seems to me a way of avoiding the issue, but I’m open to be convinced otherwise.
So my immediate plans are to get the measurement process in place – I have ordered some electricity monitors for the main office power supply (the OWL from 2SaveEnergy) and also individual staff workstations (The Power Watt Meter from Energy Direct), and upgraded our internal finance software (Access Dimensions) to take advantage of the emissions tracking functionality which will become our measure of success.
Now I need to find some volunteers in each of the 3 offices to start measuring their individual power consumption….
Other items on my plan include:
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An inventory of aging PC hardware to work out which equipment is least energy efficient
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Looking at the setting on our heating and lighting to understand what controls we have to reduce energy consumption
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Asking the sales team to start monitoring their mileage in relation to each new client project, in order to get an understanding or our current fuel usage
Once we get the measurement process in place I will be opening up the challenge to the staff to identify ways we can reduce our energy consumption, and hopefully stimulate some debate internally around corporate social responsibility.
