Energy efficiency
The best way to cut down on carbon emissions is to use less energy. And the best way to do that is to look at the efficiency of our homes and appliances. A household can save £300 a year on average by insulating, improving their heating system and being energy efficient. That’s the equivalent to a saving of around 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per home.
Walls, roofs, windows and doors
Every little bit helps – from using energy saving light bulbs to only boiling the kettle with as much water in it as you need. But the thing that has by far the greatest impact is improving your home’s insulation.
In an uninsulated house:
• 26% of heat is lost through the roof
• 33% is lost through the walls
• 18% is lost through the windows
• 11% is lost through the floor and the door
• 12% is lost due to draughts and essential ventilation
The solutions:
• Cavity wall insulation is one of the most cost-effective energy efficiency measures you can take in the home. It can save you around £115 each year on your heating bill.
• Invest in draught excluders for doors, windows and letterboxes opening onto the outside to reduce the amount of warm air escaping. Gaps between skirting boards and floorboards are also worth tackling.
• Double-glazing cuts heat loss and also reduces noise and condensation problems. Savings of around £135 on bills can be expected annually if whole-house single glazing is replaced with Energy Saving Recommended double glazing.
• Close your curtains at dusk to stop heat escaping.
There are a number of grants and offers available to help people install certain energy saving measures in their homes. To find out more about what’s available and whether you’re eligible visit www.energysavingtrust.org.uk or contact your local authority.
Heating and hot water
The facts:
• The older your boiler is, the more inefficient it is likely to be. If it is 15 years or older, you should definitely think about changing it.
• On average, heating and hot water account for around 60% of the average fuel bill and, unless your home is newly built, your heating system is unlikely to be running as efficiently as it could.
The solutions:
• You can reduce your heating bills by up to a quarter by replacing an old G-rated boiler with an A-rated condensing boiler and a full set of heating controls.
• Replace an old G-rated boiler with a new A-rated condensing one and upgrade your heating controls at the same time, and you can save up to £235 a year.
• Hot water will stay hot longer, and you will waste less energy heating it, if you insulate your hot water cylinder. Fitting a jacket to your hot water tank can cut wastage, saving you around £35 a year.
• Hot water pipes lose heat between the boiler and hot water tank, so insulate them wherever you can see them. Insulating your visible hot water pipes can save around £10 a year on your fuel bills.
• Reducing your heating thermostat by 1°C when you are too warm can cut up to 10% off your heating costs. For a gas-heated, three-bed semi-detached property, this could work out at a saving of around £55 a year!
• The thermostat on your hot water tank should be set to 60° C or 140° F - it is not necessary to set it higher than this.
Washing machines, tumble driers and dishwashers
• We use £2 billion worth of electricity, by using washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers. This produces around 8 million tonnes of CO2 each year - that's the same as the carbon dioxide emissions from about 2.5 million cars.
• The average washing machine is used for 274 cycles a year; a dishwasher for 246 cycles and a tumble dryer 148 times.
The solutions:
• Washing clothes at 30 degrees instead of higher temperatures uses around 40% less electricity (saving you around £10 a year) Modern washing powders and detergents work just as effectively at lower temperatures so unless you have very dirty washing, bear this in mind.
• A new Energy Saving Recommended dishwasher will use around 20% less energy than a typical old model. When using your dishwasher or washing machine, it’s better to wait for a full load, or use the economy cycle if your machine has one.
• Replacing your old dishwasher with a new Energy Saving Recommended model will save around £12 a year on energy bills and around 48kg of CO2 .
• Try drying your clothes outside during the summer months. You can save on average £15 a year on your electricity bill and 65kg of CO2 by drying clothes outside on a line instead of using the tumble dryer during the summer months.
• Across the UK, if everyone with a tumble drier dried outside instead of using their driers during the summer months, it would collectively save around £180million a year, and as much CO2 as would be saved by taking 240,000 cars off Britain's roads
Appliances
Energy efficient appliances use less power and are cheaper to run. And because they need less energy, they're responsible for fewer greenhouse gas emissions back at the power station - good news for the environment.
To pick out energy efficient products from the pack, look out for the Energy Efficiency Recommended logo. The distinctive blue logo can be found on anything from fridges to tumble dryers, to dishwashers and light bulbs. It is a sure sign that the appliance being bought is one of the most efficient in its category.
The facts:
• On average, UK households waste around £33 each year by leaving appliances on standby. Across the UK the electricity wasted is as much as the annual output of two 700MW power stations.
• Households in the UK are estimated to spend around 8% of their electricity bill just powering appliances in standby.
• UK households spend £3 billion every year on electricity used in consumer electronic products.
The solutions:
• If everyone boiled only the water they needed every time they used the kettle, we could save enough electricity in a year to run the UK's street lighting for nearly 7 months.
Lighting
The facts:
• In most homes, lighting accounts for around 20% of the electricity bill.
• UK households spend around £2.3 billion every year on electricity to power their lighting.
The solutions:
• Energy saving light bulbs use up to 80 per cent less electricity than standard bulbs and last around ten times as long.
• Depending on how long your lights are in use every day, an energy saving light bulb can save you around £2.50 per year on average or around £6 for brighter bulbs or those used for more than a few hours a day.
• By replacing all the remaining traditional bulbs in your home with energy saving light bulbs you could save around £37 a year from your energy bill and 135kg of CO2. Over the lifetime of all the bulbs this could add up to £590 saved on energy bills and in bulb costs and 3 tonnes of CO2.
Fridges and freezers
The facts:
• UK households use around £2 billion worth of electricity every year on cooling and freezing food and drinks.
• Fridges and freezers in UK homes use as much electricity in a year as four 700MW power stations produce in a year.
The solutions:
• Buying an Energy Saving Recommended fridge freezer to replace your old model could cut CO2 emissions produced indirectly by your home by around 140kg a year.
• A new, energy efficient fridge freezer (Energy Saving Recommended) uses around 60% less energy to do the same job than a typical old model will use, saving you around £36 a year on your energy bills.
For more information and useful tips and advice, visit www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
Doing our bit:
At our office, the Ovo Barn in Gloucestershire, we’re striving to minimise our carbon footprint. By the end of our first year we pledge to be carbon neutral. So making sure we’re doing things in the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly way possible will be an important consideration in all the decisions we take as our business grows.
Here are some of the initiatives we’re taking to reduce our impact on the environment:
Measuring our impact
Measuring your environmental impact is the first step to finding ways to be more efficient and setting targets to improve. We will publish our environmental impact and performance each year in an impact report.
We’re also working towards achieving the Carbon Trust Standard, which is awarded to organisations which measure, manage and reduce their carbon footprint www.carbonstandardtrust.com
Green champion
To help encourage our team to be as energy efficient as possible, we’ve appointed a number of ‘Ovo energy champions’.
On top of their main job helping answer customers’ questions or marketing, or whatever, our champions make sure we’re all doing our bit to help reduce our impact on the environment. They also work together to come up with new initiatives and keep tabs on our progress. See our hints and tips for a greener office for some of the ways we try to lessen the impact of office life.
Carbon offsetting
Carbon offsetting is a financial tool aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Through the purchase of carbon credits, it allows companies and individuals to indirectly support projects – such as forestry, wind turbines and the destruction of landfill methane - that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One carbon credit represents the reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide or an equivalent greenhouse gas.
Carbon offsetting is quite a controversial topic. Some think it’s a weak approach because it doesn’t encourage people to tackle their emission levels, which is the real problem. Proponents argue offsetting has a real impact on greenhouse emissions and encourages investment in greener technologies, fostering vital innovation.
The reality for an individual or a given company depends on their approach to this issue. At Ovo, carbon offsetting is a last resort. Our priority is to do everything we can to minimise our emissions in the first place.
There is also quite a lot of confusion over the quality of offsetting projects. That’s why the government has launched a Quality Assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting to help people and companies identify good quality offsets. To find out more visit www.defra.gov.uk/offsetting
Hints and tips for a greener office
Meetings and events
Organise a video/teleconference instead of travelling from different places to face-to-face meeting. It is easier, cheaper and more environmentally friendly. It also saves time.
…. if a physical meeting is necessary:
• Organise the meeting at a place where the majority of the participants are based.
• Print to order the material for the meeting. Use double-sided printing and/or print two pages on each side.
If printouts of presentations are needed, use 'Handouts'–option with six slides on each page.
• Serve tap water instead of bottled water. It is cheaper and reduces the amount of waste.
Electronic equipment
In the morning
• Switch your computer on first when you need it.
• Switch your individual or shared printer and copying machine on first when you actually need to use it.
• Use black screensaver which consumes less electricity than an animated screen saver.
During the day
• If you leave your office for more than an hour, save any open documents and put your computer on 'stand by' or 'hibernation' and switch off your individual printer.
At the end of the day
• Shut down your computer and turn off the printer.
Heating
• Adjust the thermostat, if you open a window.
• Close the office door, if you open a window
• Keep the window fully open for 5–15 minutes instead of just ajar for hours.
Lights
Use natural light wherever possible.
• Always switch off the lights in the office, bathrooms, kitchens and meeting rooms when leaving (for more than 15 minutes).
Transport
Use public transport over taking your car. Whenever possible walk or cycle – the fresh air and exercise is an added bonus
Paper use
• Avoid printing e-mails and drafts (display documents on screen rather than printing out a paper copy)
• Archive electronically.
• E-mail documents as attachments.
… if you have to print:
• Make layouts that use as little paper as possible — provide a printer friendly version.
• Use the print option 'current page' and 'pages'.
• Check 'print preview' to avoid printing mistakes.
• Print on both sides of the paper in toner-saver mode
• Print two or more pages on one sheet, where possible .
• Avoid printing on glossy paper and in colour (Note: never have a colour printer as your default printer).
Water
• Boil only the amount of water you need.
• Drink tap water (you can refrigerate it in a jar in the morning, if you want to have cold water available during the day).
• Take short showers and turn off the water while shampooing your hair.
Waste
• Re-use where possible
• Recycle used batteries and toner cartridges
• Put paper and other waste in separate waste bins
• Flatten cardboard boxes so they can be disposed off in the recycling bin
• Avoid using non-recyclable plastic bottles, cups, bags etc.