Energy Consulting - Client case

Summary
A large public service organisation with around 30.000 employees, housed in over 100 office buildings across the Netherlands, is looking for ways to make operations environmentally sustainable and to save energy and CO2-emissions. UCPartners is conducting pilots in some of the buildings to develop an integrated approach towards energy management. Energy savings up to 40% are realised by a concerted effort involving employee mobilisation, facility management and applying innovative technology.

Challenge
Public organisations are asked by both EU-commission and local government to display exemplary behaviour and performance in the realm of sustainability and energy conservation. One of the largest public organisations in the Netherlands has developed an ambitious and comprehensive programme to comply with this request. Getting energy consumption in a downward trend, after years of autonomous growth, is a key objective in this programme.

Approach
UCPartners developed a set of measures that can be applied in existing office buildings, without extensive investments or refurbishing. After an extensive energy performance analysis three sets of recommendations were made. The first set was aimed at mobilising employees to play an active role in energy conservation. Studies demonstrate that statistically only around 10% of the variance in actual energy consumption in office buildings can be explained by technical construction characteristics of the building itself and its installations. Hence 90% can only be explained by looking at what actually goes on in the building. People drive energy consumption. Not buildings, although building characteristics are still the main focus in most studies and policy recommendations (see e.g. the EU EPBD-directive). The second set of our recommendations focused on what local facility management can do to make energy consumption more efficient. The third set looked at available and innovative technology that can be installed to optimise electricity efficiency of lighting and climate equipment.
These recommendations were implemented in a pilot location that acted as a good average example for this organisation. The results are summarised in the following chart. Electricity consumption in the pilot location is now around 40% lower than before, and still sinking to date (Q1-2008).

 

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