Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work - Utliize your greatest resource!

Research from the Carbon Trust (September 08) points to UK industry wasting £7 million a day due to poor energy efficiency. The problem is not large scale industrial process but encouraging staff to turn off computers and lights, turning down the heating, or maintaining equipment properly.

Galvanise staff actions and raise spirits

For businesses eager to cut costs, running an Energy Saving Campaign is one of those few initiatives in a business where every employee from the cleaner to the CEO can make a direct influence on the prosperity of their business. Energy Saving Campaigns galvanise positive actions, making all feel inclusive in the long term prosperity of their business. 

GAIA offers a free Energy Saving Starter Pack for business keen to embrace energy savings. The FREE campaign pack provides the basic tools, steps and material to have your campaign up and running in minutes. Call us on 02476 236446 to request your free pack.

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Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work - Utilise your greatest resource (Nov 08)

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Sustainable business experts Envirowise are calling on Britain’s bosses to disclose gas, electricity, water and recycling bills with employees to encourage them to take more responsibility for reducing company outgoings and lessen their environmental impact.

Envirowise says that the more transparent businesses are about the effect rising utility costs are having on the bottom line, the more staff will be encouraged to take a proactive stance towards waste minimisation and adopt the same approach to cost cutting in the workplace as they do at home.

As much as this is good intentioned you have to ask how powerful this message would be? If I am a call centre member on a large business and I am told the company spends ‘X’ millions per year on energy how can I see my part in this consumption? If the company wants me to behave better and save energy how can I or my department demonstrate improvement and be recognised for it? And of course energy costs have risen but how much of this is down to prices and how much due to wastage?  Theres more to it then telling staff energy is expensive.

The elements key to success:

• 1)  Find a compelling message to rouse your staff to support your energy saving aims.
• 2) Talk consumption of energy not cost. After all staff influence usage not cost.
• 3) Monitor progress to feeback to staff. Monitoring usage at each meter by half hourly intervals is ideal.

Not sure how to do this? Call 02476 236446

More tips here:

Envirowise article:

http://www.envirowise.gov.uk/uk/Press-Office/Press-Releases/UK-Press-Releases/Its-good-to-share-Britains-bosses-urged-to-disclose-bills-to-save-thousands.html

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‘Thinking about your home, where should you start to look at finding energy savings?

Do these areas come to mind? The Freezer, TV, Computers, Lights etc……..

In all of these answers we are labelling high consumption products within our home and saving energy from them requires us to use them more sensibly or buy more sensibly. e.g Fill the freezer or buy an A rated one, Turn of the TV from standby or buy a low powered one, turn off unneccessary lights or put in energy saving bulbs. So the path to finding savings is not the device itself but how we use it or how we buy them.

Behaviour is therefore the key to saving energy. Getting good energy saving behaviours at work is what GAIA is all about. We help businesses reduce consumption through staff education and business awareness, then keep it that way.

Find out how: Call us on 02476 236446. GAIA

The path to finding Savings - Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work Oct 08

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Keeping the team motivated - Energy Conservation at Work

One of the key challenges to succeeding in energy saving is maintaining momentum. New initiatives, new prorities, changes in staff have the result of derailing your hard earned achievements.

The key is to inbed you energy saving into the daily operations of your business. Energy is a major cost and loosing control can have profound implications.

Tips:

• Ensure energy ‘consumption’ not just cost is part of your regular business KPIs.
• Delegate someone in your business to download an image of your daily energy consumption and display on the business noticeboard every week.
• Appoint someone as your energy champion and ensure the accountability is noted in their job description with defined targets and goals.

Keeping the team motivated - Energy Conservation at Work Oct 08

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Lifting spirits in tough times - Energy Conservation at Work

The news that workers at JCB in Staffordshire voted to cut all working hours to save colleagues jobs is a great testament to the British spirit of togetherness in times of difficulty.

For all business keen to cut costs running an Energy Saving Campaign can also help you both in saving money and motivating the troops in positive actions. There has been no better time to influence employee actions than now. To date business have relied on the ‘Green message’ to carry influence over employees and whilst profits were high, cost saving was never a real priority to get people excited. With the marked downturn in the economy, employees are more understanding towards energy saving as being both environmentally responsible and job securing.

Energy Saving is one of those few inititives in a business where every employee from the cleaner to the CEO can make a direct influence on the properity of their business. Energy Saving Campaigns galvanise positive actions, making all feel inclusive in the long term properity of thier business. 

GAIA Active helps business save energy consumption and keep it that way.

Want help running an energy saving campaign give us a call on 02476 236446.

Lifting spirits in tough times - Energy Conservation at Work Oct 08

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aM&T is not enough- Energy Conservation at Work

Automated Monitoring & Targeting (aM&T) services that look at your energy data are great tools to demonstrate and educate the business in energy consumption usage. But the great challenge is using the data. Too many companies buy systems and software but fail to see how it will be applied.

Consider this?

How likely can an energy manager in Stirling be able to motivate a Store Manager in Cardiff to save energy and keep it that way.  Will an MD be able to drive staff to listen to his/her messages about saving energy without cynicism to their intentions?

Energy saving starts with your employees.

GAIA is an energy management service with people at the heart of the process. We can motivate and support your store manager in Cardiff and the energy manager in Sterling. For the MD we can help him/her to get the staff on board and keep it that way. We are beyond just aM&T.

GAIA

We don’t sell energy, we save energy.

aM&T is not enough- Energy Conservation at Work Oct 08

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Ambitious goal but HOW exactly will we do it? - Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work

Setting goals is only great as long as you know how you will achieve it, unless you’re the UK Government that is.

Today the Government has committed the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the middle of this century. Climate Change and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the current 60% target would be replaced by a higher goal.

The UK is struggling to reduce our Carbon Emissions now so upping the targets is very ambitious and it begs the question why? Have the French and Germans just upped thier targets too, are we seeing catastrope greater than we imagined before that has gone unreported or are the UK Govenment just leading the world in media ‘headline grabbling’?

Such huge cuts will require enormous actions to the current structure of the UK economy. Just think every company cutting consumption by 40%/60% and getting 20/30% more energy it all from renewables.

Of course the wonders in Whitehall will have a statistical model somewhere and may have based our huge cuts on other factors. Namely that we no longer manufacture, have loads more nuclear than we has currently been suggested, simply offset our carbon and buy out our problem or we cut consumption like Russia in the 1990s by simply imploding our economy! 

I think the HOW is crying out to be told!

GAIA

Ambitious goal but HOW exactly will we do it? - Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work

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If you want to save energy in your business or organisation start with involving your people.

When tasked with saving energy many ‘energy champions’ look to machinery, lighting or heating systems first in a pursuit to find some key defined area where they can make a change to bring a swift reward. This is as much to do with the individual working within their comfort zone, (IE they understand their production line/machinery/building structure)  as it is energy saving. Logically the energy champion may feel more in control of a bit of kit than the employees. The problem is if you find something you still have to get someone or something to manage the change and sustain it. So you either need to persuade someone to buy (often unneccessary) kit to turn off stuff, that staff could often do anyway, or get your staff on board to support you to behave as you wish.

The key is to reverse the process start by running a campaign to ‘include’ your staff in the process. Their inclusion will bring up many ideas you know about and many other ideas you don’t. Even if the ideas are ones you would guess it does not matter.  Why? because your staff will feel appreciated, involved and recognised for their ideas and will be much more likely to support your ongoing initiatives as you listened to them.

If you don’t know how or can’t do this, contact us for help

GAIA

Other useful tips: Read our 10 Top Tips to Saving energy in the workplace to get you started. http://www.gaiaactive.com/toptips.asp

Focus on the your people first - Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work Oct 08

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Starting off on the right foot - Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work

Over the last few weeks a number of UK business have contacted GAIA to discuss their energy consumption and identify areas to save. In many cases the business managers are looking for a ‘quick win’ a single action that can instantly save money and secure profitability, although this may be possible in businesses whom have no control whatsoever over energy, this ‘quick win’ focus starts the business off in the wrong direction in energy saving.

Companies need to think of energy efficiency as ‘The ‘Third Energy Source’ available (after fossil fuels and renewables). Continually saving energy can contribute a long term financial return for your business and improve your credibility. 

Starting energy efficiency in your business need not be hard: Read our 10 Top Tips to Saving energy in the workplace to get you started. http://www.gaiaactive.com/toptips.asp

GAIA

Starting off on the right foot - Energy Efficiency & Conservation at Work Oct 08

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