Sustainability
Data wrangler
companies can get a hold on their energy efficiency data. Last year, The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) announced that, from April 2013, UK listed companies will be
required to include CO² emissions data in their annual reports, as part of a scheme called Mandatory Carbon Reporting (MCR). This is just the start, however as, from 2016, the regulation will affect all major UK organisations – not just listed companies – and if successful, it’s likely that other countries will soon start to adopt a similar approach.
The UK is already flying the flag for sustainability with initiatives such as BREEAM (the assessment method to gauge the sustainability performance of buildings), Mandatory Carbon Reporting and
various CO² standards. However, whilst many UK businesses have existing initiatives to improve their sustainability efforts in these areas, most firms have failed to take an integrated approach that extends across the entire organisation. As a result, some departments will have the necessary information available to comply with MCR, whilst others may not.
In order to address this issue, many businesses are now utilising specialist software in order to collect the cross-functional management information they need to reduce costs, maximise energy efficiency and comply with regulation. As a result, organisations now have the ability to take an integrated approach and bring together disparate data from various sources, including a combination
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of powerful new ‘smart meters’ and manual processes, and join this information together to gain an instant and reliable overview of their energy usage, emissions and costs.
“Improvements can only be realised if measures are implemented within a result-focused project.”
This approach gives organisations unparalleled insight into the most important factors affecting their sustainability profiles, including the consumption of energy, gas, water and waste flows. Furthermore, solutions like these can make the audit process much more simple for businesses by automatically recording all the information needed for the purpose of analysing and reporting. This type of software allows companies to measure and monitor key areas in order to provide insight into their current energy situation and also give them the ability to generate a summary of energy consumption across specific periods so that they can discover opportunities for improvement. This commitment to regular monitoring will also help to highlight the results of savings once changes have been made to a company’s processes.
Using this approach, Iron Mountain, a world leader in information management services, was able to identify one of its properties where 60 people were working on the day shift, compared to only two at night – and yet energy consumption was the same for both shifts. This information
With the date for the implementation of Mandatory Carbon Reporting looming, Planon Director, Tim Clapham, discusses how
enabled Iron Mountain to review its operations, identify excessive energy usage and costs to improve future energy efficiency. As a result, Iron Mountain has already achieved a 5% saving on its energy consumption.
Improvements and benefits such as these can only be realised, however, if measures are implemented and monitored within the frameworks of result-focused projects, with clearly defined goals, resources and plans. Planon’s Sustainability Management Solution has been designed to integrate within a company’s existing software, or act as a standalone solution, to enable organisations to efficiently implement individual energy management projects and monitor the results. For modern businesses, this fully integrated approach to sustainability holds the key to cutting energy costs, becoming more environmentally friendly and meeting increasingly stringent regulations. However, in order to improve the sustainability performance of an organisation, it will be essential to have reliable management information available both for internal use and also external reporting purposes. This type of software can play a valuable role in cost savings and regulatory compliance for businesses, making it a particularly valuable resource with the onset of MCR in just a couple of months’ time.
www.planonsoftware.com/uk
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