Green and confused: The office offenders

Offices that leave their lights on are eco-unfriendly
Kieran Cooke

You recently said that we should use energy-efficient light bulbs at home, but what about the huge office blocks that leave their lights on? Why is the householder the target of the eco-lobbyists and not the commercial sector?
You’re right, of course. While some companies have caught the habit of energy saving, it is remarkable how many want to boast of their profligacy by lighting up buildings like Christmas trees 24 hours a day. Perhaps they think that burning the midnight oil — even when the only people in the building are the watchman and cleaners — is a mark of success. It is a sign of corporate stupidity.
The UK is far behind many countries when it comes to saving on lighting energy: the reason Berlin or Frankfurt are darker cities than London or Birmingham is not because the Germans stop work earlier or enjoy dim places: it’s just that they’re far more sensible about how they use their energy.
Lighting accounts for about 20 per cent of energy in the average office. Turning off the lights at night — or reducing their glow to a minimum — saves energy and lowers bills. But take a good look around: the actual working area of an office usually represents well under half of the total floor space. And even in the working areas, not everyone is present all the time.
One calculation by office designers bdp (bdp.com) is that approximately 70 sq m of the UK office space is lit up unnecessarily, at a cost of £300 million a year. If that energy wasn’t used for needless lighting, offices could prevent about 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 going into the atmosphere and make a big contribution to emissions reduction targets.
The Carbon Trust (carbontrust.co.uk), which gives interest-free loans to companies intent on energy savings, has information on how to cut back on lighting. Using energy-efficient bulbs is important but other simple adjustments can result in substantial savings: fitting motion or occupancy detectors to turn lights off and on in infrequently used spaces and cleaning light fittings regularly can make a considerable impact. Carrying out a carbon audit is a good starting point too.
In daylight hours more should be done about maximising natural light: it is criminal that offices are still being built with little or no regard to using the Sun to help to brighten them up. Equipment that can regulate lighting, dependent on the degree of natural light, is available.
Besides lighting, there’s the energy that often goes on the wasteful use of air conditioning, the sheaves of waste paper and the computers left on round the clock. A single computer and monitor left on 24 hours a day can run up an energy bill of £45 a year: switch it off out of hours or put it on standby and the bill could be reduced to £10 a year — little adjustments can make a big difference.
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