Burn more coal? That’s not what the average London office considers when switching on the air conditioning, but in actual fact, that is what likely happens when we lower our office temperature.
Air conditioning in office space is known to be a large user of electricity – expensive stuff nowadays – and around 30% of our electricity comes from burning coal.
Why do offices use so much energy? There’s usually a whole variety of reasons for high electricity bills, and we usually get to the bottom of this during our energy audits or AC inspections and do so across a range of London’s buildings.
And even though Air con reports are mandatory for all systems over 12kw, there is real benefit to the client that other reports from the EPBD legislations do not necessarily bring – this is chiefly because the company ordering the report is also the one that will make year on year gains from any changes in behaviour or from improvements.
Do we care? Air conditioning users may not be immediately aware that toxic pollution and speeding up of climate change is the result of trying to achieve a comfortable temperature to work in, and its clear that reducing emissions tends not to be the main motivator for most people, so the government have been busy trying to work out how to motivate us to change our behaviour and a report by the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insight team makes some interesting suggestions (http://bit.ly/mQmMdD).
Why do we save? It identified that one of the most powerful influences on us may be the behaviour of other people and also discussed offering rewards to the community for improvements that individuals make to their own building’s efficiency. It’s quite an appealing idea that we might reduce our bills if the community as a whole also benefits.
So although ‘Burn more coal’ as a slogan might not catch on – maybe reducing bills after other businesses have gleaned hard cash from their Air conditioning report may do!
But of course, some of our savvy customers have learnt that from their Air con report already!
