ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Managing your commitment to change
The application of effective change management can provide a range of benefits to public sector organisations, whether they are looking to save money, reduce their carbon output or both, reports Richard Mackillican
A
s public bodies desperately try to reduce their carbon
output in order to comply with the requirements of Carbon Reduction Commitment, many are looking to employ change management techniques to enable them and their staff to navigate through this exercise.
“One of the main challenges to embedding carbon management in local authorities is devolving responsibility and ownership,” says Larissa Lockwood, public sector manager for central and local government at the Carbon Trust.
“This means engaging with the whole organisation – essentially making this everybody’s business. Historically, carbon management might have been seen as an estates only issue, but really to move a whole organisation towards being a low carbon entity, you need to get everyone involved from the top down.
“On our carbon management programme, it is essential for participants to have a senior sponsor. Usually this is a director who is actively involved in championing carbon management and chairs a high- level carbon management board.
“The project leader then coordinates a team of people from across the organisation, ensuring that there is adequate representation from all directorates.”
When working with councils, the Carbon Trust helps them
Nov/Dec 10 Larissa Lockwood
tap into that and speak their language.
“Quite often the drivers go beyond simply legislation to include efficiency and cutting costs, because carbon reduction is about cost reduction,” says Lockwood.
“We also help organisations establish governance and reporting structures. This means making sure that people are monitoring and reporting progress back up to a senior level so that everyone is very clear on what is happening and can celebrate success.
identify their drivers and build the business case for investment forwarding carbon reduction.
“We need to know to what motivates them so that we can
“Then finally organisations need to present a coordinated approach in a carbon management plan that has been signed off by their chief
executive or equivalent, so that everyone throughout the organisation understands the plan of action and their part in it. To date, the Carbon Trust has helped almost three hundred local authorities to reach this point.”
Many councils are having to dedicate precious resources to these carbon management programmes. Could this distract them from actually delivering services to the public?
“Carbon management is essentially an invest-to-save programme and should be an integral part of business decisions,” says Lockwood.
“Failure to act on carbon reduction will only result in higher energy bills and potential penalties from the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.
“There is a huge range in terms of how prepared organisations are for the CRC across the public sector but many local authorities have already taken the
important step of understanding their carbon baseline because they have been reporting on national indicator 185.
“From our experience of working with local authorities we are confident that they will be making a good start.”
The Carbon Reduction Commitment isn’t just about reducing carbon. It is about saving money.
So as long as local authorities can see the return on investment of both their time and resources, maintaining the drive to push this programme forward should not be too onerous, given the economic circumstances of most local authorities.
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