Commercial buildings use a lot of energy, which can be expensive and of course, is bad for the environment. If you want to reduce how much energy your commercial buildings use, whether office space or warehouses, try some of these tips and tricks.
Cutting back on energy use is a good way to save funds, whether you’re a start-up or an established company. You can save on the costs of the energy itself and may be able to save more thanks to tax breaks and other benefits available to energy-efficient companies, such as https://tri-merit.com/section-179d/.
Turn It Off
A lot of commercial buildings use a lot more power than they need to, which has a big impact. You can bring down this power usage very easily, simply by turning things off. Turn the lights at night and in empty rooms. Turn down the temperature in heated rooms, and turn it up a little when it’s cool. Don’t do silly things like have the heating and the air conditioning on at the same time.
Know What You Want From Your Buildings
If you want to lower the cost of running your office, then you need to make the best use of your assets. You might have much control over this if you rent rather than own your office space. Think about how you can best use the building.
Get a baseline of how much energy you use. You can look at your fuel bills to get estimates. If you rent and can’t get an itemized bill, you can hire equipment to track your energy use.
Regroup and Reorganise
Are you using your premises to their full potential? Are you leaving loads of space empty while your sales team is out visiting clients? Could you lose some desks, shrink some office space, and use less energy? Rearranging your workspace can save energy and be good business sense.
Look at Your Lights
Use energy-efficient bulbs throughout your building. You can also fit daylight controllers so your lights will only come on when there’s not enough natural light. Motion sensors can be used to turn off lights in empty rooms.
Get Your IT Right
IT equipment uses a lot of power. Set all your company computers into their most efficient settings, and make sure they’re turned off when they’re not being used. You could swap to a thin client system instead of having a desktop PC on every desk. You can reduce the cooling load by having low-energy screens on the desk, with computing facilities in a remote server room.
Buy Smart
Change suppliers to find better deals and better efficiency. Check your consumption every month for things like gas, water, and electricity.
Look for sustainable companies for your office supplies too. Make sure you do some good research though into the overall impact of your supplies before you invest in anything that claims to green. Recycled pens might sound great, but make sure they’re actually going to save you energy and money.
