Energy Use
Electricity use in your office is likely to be your biggest operational emitter. In calculating your footprint this is the easiest to measure because the information is all in your electricity bill. The means for reducing your emissions from your office are in many ways similar to those for housing – switching to clean energy, and paying attention to your heating and cooling, water heating, lighting and appliances.
Since you can’t operate a 21st century office on zero electricity even with the most energy efficient equipment and the best habits, so the big gains will come from sourcing it from zero-emissions generation. There are three ways you can do this.
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If you own your own office building, or have substantial control of it through a long-term lease, you can install solar and battery power onsite and can potentially generate a lot of your own electricity. This does involve an up-front cost but in most cases this will be paid for through savings in electricity bills over a period of 5-10 years. There is a little knowledge required to ensure you make the best decisions for your organisation. Choice has a handy guide on purchasing a solar system and the Clean Energy Council (the peak body for the Australian renewable energy industry) has a more detailed guide.
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If you don’t have this level of control over your office and your landlord is not interested in installing solar onsite, and easy option is to switch to an energy retailer with a good climate record – one which sources as much as possible of its power from renewables and has robust emissions policies of its own. Greenpeace Australia ranked every Australian electricity retailer against a set of five criteria and published these in their Green Electricity Guide. This can provide a good starting point for you to reassess your arrangements.
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A third option, likely to be less common than the first and second, is to join a community power scheme and generate power cooperatively in your local community. This, of course, is not possible to do on your own, but if there is momentum for such a thing in your community it presents an opportunity for you to not only source power for your own operations but for your tenants. Community power schemes are discussed in more detail on our Clean Energy page.