How to reduce carbon emissions - OFFICES AND RETAIL SITES

Beyond simple measures, depending on the type and age of your chiller plant, new energy efficient plant may need to be recommended to obtain significant energy reduction improvement. Additionally, a controls division which can upgrade or design, install and commission the latest BMS technology to deliver the optimum in building operating control efficiency. These have involved setting energy savings goals and informing employees about how they can both help and benefit. Here's what you can do.

STEP1: Fine tuning your Building Management System (10-15% savings possible)

Your Building Management System (BMS) is a critical component in controlling and minimising the
energy consumption of your building. This plant is often poorly designed, set up and maintained. Actually12º to 14º C would suffice most of the year and just this extra 3-4 degrees results in up to 25% excess energy consumption!

Hire an Energy Team to make small changes to your existing chiller plant which improves energy efficiency such as loading and unloading switches and condenser cooling water temperature settings. A BMS needs to be fine tuned on a continuous basis to if savings are to be made and these savings are to be sustained.

The CarbonCare Energy Team can audit your building to establish where heat is being wasted, suggest which radiators should be used and install thermostatic controls on the radiators, making sure they are set at the correct levels.

For example, Chillers have condensers which cool the refrigerant. This often results in employees opening the windows to cool their offices and causes needless energy consumption. In addition, the configuration of the chilling circuit can often be altered to adapt new technology and improve performance even further. Yet many buildings have radiators blazing away over the winter months despite the outside temperature.

Up to 30% of the fuel energy consumed by boiler and hot water distribution systems in operation in UK commercial buildings today could be saved.

STEP3: Setting correct operating temperatures of hot water distribution systems (5-10% savings possible)

Temperature controls are critical if you are to achieve maximum energy consumption for your hot water boilers. Also, an additional, yet unnecessary, energy consuming cooling water pump is in use in these systems offering further opportunities to reduce energy and carbon emissions.

STEP5: Optimise the operation of fans & blowers and chilled, hot water and cold water pumps (20-30% savings possible)

Pumps are used to circulate fluids, such as hot water, around your building and normally they have a common circulation line with take off lines to the various floors and offices. Actually 70º to 75º would suffice most of the year and this extra 20º C results in 5-10% excess energy consumption!

STEP4: Optimise Refrigeration Chiller performance (20-25% savings possible)

As with hot water, temperature controls are also critical if you are to achieve maximum energy consumption for your refrigeration plant.
A handy guide to reducing energy, carbon emissions and costs across your business.

Today we are all conscious of the effect we are having on accelerating climate change as well as the spiralling cost of energy.

STEP2: Improve the installation and operation of hot water boiler plant (20-30% savings possible)

Heating in commercial buildings accounts for over 60% of total energy consumption and hot water generation makes up a large percentage of this. Again this consumes excess energy.

A good energy team can provide solutions to optimise fluid flow by controlling the speed of pumps and fans and by correctly setting damper openings â€ÂÂ" all of which can make dramatic reductions in your energy consumption and costs.

STEP6: Reduce the energy consumption of your lighting 15-30% savings possible)

Lighting is one of the major energy consumers in a commercial building. For example, if a temperature of 50 to 60º C is required, staff often set an average operating temperature of 85º C just to be on the safe side. By correcting these, including rebalancing the circuit, and incorporating a variable speed drive, a significant 20-30% saving in the AHU's energy consumption can be made.

STEP8: Switch off outside working hours (5-10% possible)

The simplest way to save energy in your building is to ensure not to heat, cool, ventilate or light areas which are not occupied, especially outside normal working hours. If the temperature is set too high, unnecessary energy is being consumed. It is often that the flow is kept constant, irrespective of demand. Additionally, dust is removed from the air through AHU filters and air temperature is controlled by the heating and cooling coils.

Significant reductions can be made in the energy consumption of lighting with corresponding cost savings by:

Relamping with energy efficient lamps and controls (common for buildings older than 15 years)

Replacement with better luminairs and lamps during refurbishment

Incorporating better controls (Lux level, PIR, motion sensors etc) within the Building Management System

Optimising the voltage for discharge lamps with constant loads

STEP7: Optimise the operation of Air Handling Unit supply and extract fans (20-30% savings possible)

Air Handling Units (AHUs) are critical for ensuring comfort conditions by maintaining the flow of conditioned air though out your building. This results in increased, unnecessary energy consumption. If the temperature is set too low, unnecessary energy is being consumed. As a result, significant energy is wasted. In some buildings the humidity also is controlled by electrical steam humidifiers.

Studies have found that the energy consumed by the AHU supply and extract fan can be higher than necessary due to incorrect setting of the damper controls. The air within your building is continuously recirculated through the AHUs with the help of a supply and extract fan. In many office buildings, boilers and hot water pipe networks are often not designed with energy efficiency in mind. As a consequence, the energy consumption of the chiller is higher than is necessary, with savings of 10-15% on offer. Solutions include:

Identifying occupant usage patterns for the different areas in the building

Installing automatic controls to switch off equipment such as non critical computers, copiers and network printers when not in use

Installing presence detectors or time-clocks for toilet lighting with interlocked extraction fans

Implementing employee awareness campaigns to encourage occupants to turn off equipment(see step 10)

STEP9: Control radiator temperatures (5-15% possible)

Space heating of buildings is the single greatest consumer of energy. However, BMS has often been left to operate with the parameters that were set during its installation.

Many companies can work to devise and implement energy awareness campaigns.

Energy Teams can fine tune the BMS parameters providing a saving in energy consumption of at least 10-15%. For example, if a comfort temperature of 18º C is required in the building, to be on the safe side staff often set the chillers between 7º and 9º C. The same occurs with fans and blowers on air conditioning systems, which once installed are often not properly balanced and dampers are poorly set up. Buildings account for over 50% of carbon emissions and offices and shops are major culprits with heating air-con and lighting largely to blame. In this way, a major source of energy inefficiency can be eliminated which can deliver significant cost savings.

STEP10: Engage with employees to make savings and make them stick

One of the simplest ways to reduce energy consumption and importantly make the savings stick, is to ensure that the staff who work in the building are made aware of the implications of climate change, the role energy consumption has, where energy is wasted in the building and how they can help to stop the waste. Many are also not well installed and not operated in the most energy efficiency manner. Posters, 'switch-off' stickers, competitions, building energy champions and progress updates are just some of the elements which when used in a structured campaign can have a major impact on energy reduction and cost savings.

On their own, any of these ten steps will significantly reduce your current energy spend. Collectively, they can have a dramatic impact, not only on your bottom line, but also on reducing the carbon footprint of you whole building or buildings portfolio.

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