Knowing your office carbon footprint is an important part of moving towards a greener and more efficient business operation. Calculating your footprint can be a perfect first step in determining baselines for conservation and emission reduction initiatives. It also gives you an excellent tool for tracking the progress of conservation efforts, comparing your carbon footprint with similar businesses, and motivating employees to participate in conservation campaigns.
Track your energy usage with a range of tools.
Green Irene provides an online office carbon footprint calculator tool to its clients. This calculator enables your business to analyze energy use and cost for multiple years, track greenhouse gas emissions quickly and easily, view weather data to learn if weather affects your energy use, see the results of your energy conservation efforts on easy-to-read charts and graphs, and submit your commercial building data to ENERGY STAR to receive an official energy rating.
The calculator looks at energy, water, and heating fuel use. Coupled with a resource such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol calculator (http://www.ghgprotocol.org/calculation-tools/service-sector), which concentrates more on carbon emissions from vehicles, these calculators can serve as a robust toolkit for companies in designing office energy/water/carbon footprint reduction campaigns.
Submit data to ENERGY STAR and receive an official rating.
The Green Irene calculator requires access to a history of monthly utility bills (water and fuel data are optional if these utilities are not metered separately for your office). Also note that the calculator requires a minimum entry of 5,000 for office square footage.
As part of a Green Office Makeover, your local Green Irene Eco-Consultant can provide you with more information on this calculator, as well as many additional resources to help you develop and implement your conservation initiatives, including policy templates, research support, and a full line of eco-friendly products. Contact him or her today and get access to powerful resources that can help your business go green!
From the National Association of Realtors Green Designation, of which Green Irene LLC is a Founding Sponsor. This impacts new non-residential buildings in California:
Green Building Gets a Boost With CALGREEN
The green building movement just got a big boost. The state of California was the first state to mandate green building standards when the California Building Standards Commission unanimously adopted the Green Building Standards Code (CALGREEN) last month.
When CALGREEN takes effect on January 1, 2011, all new nonresidential buildings over 10,000 square feet will need to adhere to the code. Its goal is reducing green house gas emissions, energy consumption and water use.
“This is a major step for the green industry,” comments Al Medina, director of NAR’s Green Designation. “Before, green mandates were left up to municipalities. I wouldn’t be surprised if other states start following California’s lead.”
Of CALGREEN, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “With this first-in-the nation mandatory green building standards code, California continues to pave the way in energy efficiency and environmental protection. Today’s action lays the foundation for the move to greener buildings constructed with environmentally advanced building practices that decrease waste, reduce energy use and conserve resources.”
CALGREEN will require new buildings constructed in California to:
- Reduce water consumption by 20 percent
- Divert 50 percent of construction waste from landfills
- Install low pollutant-emitting materials
- Include separate water meters for nonresidential buildings’ indoor and outdoor water use, with a requirement for moisture-sensing irrigation systems for larger landscape projects
- Get mandatory inspections of energy systems (e.g., heat furnace, air conditioner and mechanical equipment) for nonresidential buildings over 10,000 square feet to ensure that all are working at their maximum capacity and according to their design efficiencies.
Once a building passes the state building inspection, its owner will be able to label the building compliant with CALGREEN.
CALGREEN likely will spur advances in building products. “California is a hotbed of innovation. With the mandate, there’s a lot of opportunity for small manufacturers with innovative products,” he says. Moreover, builders likely will be seeking out such companies and manufacturers because they’ll need products and materials to meet the CALGREEN standards for projects.
“Before, a new start-up would have to claw its way to get in front of builders. They have opportunity, in the next couple years, for builders to find them,” adds Medina. Moreover, he notes that opportunity exists for California specialists, such as real estate professionals, builders and developers, to become expert in CALGREEN and become the go-to person for consumers and building end-users and be the one to explain CALGREEN and its effects on them and their businesses.
And in the long term, CALGREEN has the potential to improve all buildings, not just new ones. “There will be a stark difference between new and old buildings in terms of energy efficiency and comfort,” he observes. He anticipates a time when the gap between new and old will be so wide that older buildings will be forced to upgrade to remain competitive in the market.
With the central role played by technology in the modern workplace, greening your IT operations is a fundamental part of improving office efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Take this quick quiz excerpted from the Wall Street Journal to test your awareness of green IT issues:
1) Which of these roles for information and communications technology has the potential to yield the biggest reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030?
A. Retrofitting existing buildings
B. Designing new buildings for reduced emissions
C. Telecommuting and virtual meetings
D. E-commerce and replacing paper
Answer: D. According to a study by the World Wildlife Fund, a big increase in online shopping and in the use of electronic transactions and documents to replace paper bills and publications could eliminate nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gases a year from the environment. That’s about twice the reduction estimated to result from either making existing buildings more efficient or designing new buildings that constantly monitor and adjust air conditioning and heating to minimize waste. More telecommuting and virtual meetings would save about 160 million tons of emissions a year, it estimated.
9) What percentage of corporate PC users leave their computers on nights and weekends when they aren’t in use?
A. About half
B. Hardly anyone
C. About 25%
D. Almost everyone
Answer: A. According to the nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy, less than half of corporate PC users shut their computers down overnight, even though they aren’t using them. Turning them off would save an estimated 20 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions a year—roughly equivalent to the impact of four million cars.
10) What makes Windows 7 greener than Vista and other older Windows operating systems?
A. Microsoft prints the product manual on recycled paper.
B. It won’t run on high-energy microprocessors.
C. It reduces processor activity while the computer is idle.
D. It adjusts for intermittent power from wind turbines and solar panels.
Answer: C. It reduces background activity by electronically checking all connected devices at once and then going to sleep, rather than checking them at random times, which requires a central processor to be in operation almost constantly. It also reduces power consumption in other ways: It can be configured to stop searching for a network connection when a network cable isn’t plugged in. It suspends Bluetooth radio connectivity when it senses the Bluetooth device is in low-power mode. And it dims displays after shorter periods of inactivity than previous models.
How well did you know these green IT facts? Green Irene’s Ask Green Irene database can provide you with much more information about energy conservation in your IT operations, which can translate into cost savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions for your business. A 3-month membership to Ask Green Irene is included in the Green Office Makeover service offered by Green Irene.
