Environmental Targets - Services to the Education Sector

[LilacAngel]

I work for a European company that provides services to the education sector, mainly consultancy and advice to end users via government funded contracts. Our main environmental impacts are associated with staff travel or from emissions from energy usage to keep our buildings running and waste to landfill, paper usage etc. (we don't produce anything and it's an office-based business). I am responsible for managing the EMS. My question relates to our environmental targets. Initially we set one of our targets to reduce our energy usage at a particular location by 10% for our first year and we achieved approx 1.5-2% reduction in energy usage (office based staff here).

I have presented the energy usage figures for this location to our EMS group (group focussed on Environmental Issues) and I am about to present to our Management Review team. However, I know that the MD will struggle if I present a lowered target for next year, eg. 5% reduction in energy usage specifically for gas and electricity usage for this one site. I think he will insist on keeping our targets high. I have spoken with him already and I explained that a 5% target will represent a more realistic future target. Our external assessors (ISO 14001) were happy with the rationale to reduce this subsequent target in future years given the impact of running of heating/cooling and powering an office and there being no other significant ways to reduce this impact (I am pushing for a review of our heating/cooling systems and insulation for the site). So far actions taken are an awareness campaign eg. “switch off” and reduced electricity for ICT related activities (move to virtual PCs). Obviously part of the improved performance can be explained by factors outside of our control ie. weather patterns and requirement for reduced AC cooling and heating compared to the previous year. Additionally, the head count for people located at this building is the same for the comparison year.

In a nutshell, is a 5% target a reasonable/sensible stretching enough target to go for next year and to argue for at the Management Review?

 

[somashekar]

Re: Environmental Targets

I guess you are missing something ... the denominator.
Your main purpose is this as you say ... provide services to the education sector, mainly consultancy and advice to end users via government funded contracts.
In doing this energy is consumed, and your objectives and targets must be in relation to your main purpose which can be in Euro terms, or other resources like man power (head count) etc. Your target must be at enhancing the ratio of use of your energy against your business return or use of energy per person, or something directly meaningful.
Along with this you must also know the top areas where energy usage happens and set up programs of short term, medium term and long term to tackle them. A simple energy audit will focus your such areas for action. Technology in lighting, heating / cooling are well advanced and you have options, only when you know your top areas where energy use is predominent and then actions can be taken up. Based on these the target estimate can be well set.

 

[samsung]

Re: Environmental Targets

In a nutshell, is a 5% target a reasonable/ sensible stretching enough target to go for next year and to argue for at the Management Review?

Your target should be what your system is capable to achieve at the optimum level of performance. Looking at the past trends and data, you need to determine if there's enough margin to further reduce the energy consumption to 5%, then yes, it's a reasonable target. You need to consider all that you have planned to implement in the next year and then calculate how much would it be equivalent to. Your target should now not be too larger than what you predicted based on calculations and trend analysis. But in the absence of large amount of past data/trends, last year's (or last 2 years') performance could be the rationale to base your target upon.

Thanks.