Updated standards on the way for Environmental Management

A milestone has been reached in the development of a new draft of the standard many city administrations will be familiar with for helping to ensure the environmental quality of their infrastructure and operations: ISO 14001 for Environmental Management Systems (EMS).

The first formal draft produced by the expert committee tasked with bringing the standard up-to-date describes the potential requirements of the revised version of ISO 14001 and gives an indication of what might be included in the final version of the standard scheduled, which will be published in one year's time. The last draft dates from 2004. The committee is composed of representatives of national standards organisations from up to 91 countries.

ISO standards 14000 through to 14064 plus ISO 19001 constitute a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment, comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements, plus put in place a methodology to continually improve management. The standards are voluntary.



Its aim is to set out the criteria for an environmental management system (EMS), providing a framework that a company or organization can follow to set up an effective EMS. It can be used by any organization that wants to improve resource efficiency, reduce waste, and drive down costs, and is used in many public administrations and their suppliers as a condition of procurement contracts.

Using ISO 14001 can provide assurance to management and employees as well as external stakeholders that environmental impact is being measured and improved.

ISO 14001 is currently being reviewed. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has identified the following emerging changes to ISO 14001 as a result of the revision:

1. Strategic Environmental Management
2. Leadership
3. Protecting the environment
4. Environmental performance
5. Life-cycle thinking
6. Communication
7. Documentation

Strategic Environmental Management
There is a new requirement to understand the context of the organisation implementing the standard in order to factor in relevant external and internal issues. Particular focus is on the needs and expectations of interested parties that can affect, or be affected by, the organisation. In this context the organisation should identify risks associated with threats and opportunities, significant environmental aspects and compliance obligations and determine actions to address them within the EMS.

Leadership: Commitment to environmental management
A new clause has been added with specific responsibilities for top management to demonstrate their leadership and commitment to environmental management. This is because having senior management buy in is a surefire way to ensure the policies become embedded in the organisation.

From prevention to protection
Environmental policy adopted by organisations should include a commitment to the “protection of the environment”. There is no definition about this but it includes “prevention of pollution” and other commitments such as sustainable resource use, climate change mitigation and adaptation, protection of biodiversity and ecosystems, etc.

Improving environmental performance
The emphasis is now on improving performance related to the management of environmental aspects. The organisation shall determine criteria to evaluate its environmental performance, using appropriate indicators.

Life-cycle thinking
Organisations will need to extend their control and influence to the environmental impacts from raw material acquisition/generation to end-of-life treatment. This does not imply a requirement to carry out a life-cycle assessment, but it is obviously advantageous to do so in order to maximise resource efficiency and minimise costs, wastage, etc.

Communication
Equal emphasis on external and internal communications has been added. The decision to communicate externally is retained by the organisation but taking into account its compliance obligations.

Documentation
The term “documented information”, is used instead of “documents” and “records”. The organisation has the flexibility to determine when “procedures” are needed.

Today there are over 300,000 organisations around the world implementing the standard and you might be surprised to learn that China is one of the most enthusiastic holder of certificates. In 2012 the top three countries for the total number of certificates issued were China, Japan and Italy, while the top three for growth in the number of certificates were China, Spain and Italy.

That year experienced a growth of 9% (+ 23,887) in the issuance of certificates, in 167 countries, nine more than in the previous year.

My books:

• Energy Management in Buildings, and
• Energy Management in Industry,

are both designed to help with reaching the related standard ISO 50001 for energy management. Click on the links for more information.

Energy managers: the hidden army that toils to save the planet

The Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh was designed to minimise energy use.

 

An army of secret warriors is being deployed increasingly by cities and managers of the built environment around the world. Their vital task is to make visible where energy is being wasted, saving carbon and money for everyone. 

They are energy managers are the hidden footsoldiers of the twenty-first century's war against climate change, a foremost phalanx amongst those professions that are struggling to make urban environments more sustainable.

For the most part unseen and unnoticed by the public, they toil in buildings everywhere, from hospitals to hotels, factories to data centres, from office blocks to leisure centres. After all, the energy used in buildings forms about 40% of all energy used and 36% of the world's CO₂ emissions. 

Their training leads them to sense the hidden flows of energy as it courses through pipes, wires, spaces and materials. They don't perceive a static situation, such as a boiler switched on, a light glowing, the window open, a tap dripping. They see this as part of a set of processes through time, visualising it as a series of transformations from one type of energy to another, such as, to take the example of a motor, from electricity to kinetic energy to dissipated heat energy.

For them, saving energy is eternal delight, in an evolution of the visionary poet William Blake's famous aphorism, "energy is eternal delight". Consequently these heroes are constantly struggling against the limits of the second law of thermodynamics, striving to prevent useful thermal or electrical energy from being dissipated irreversibly.

Their catechism derives solely from the primum movens that "No process is possible in which the sole result is the absorption of heat from a reservoir and its complete conversion into work".

Energy efficiency

Energy efficiency is frequently described as the “low hanging fruit”. The sector is expanding at a rate of 5% per year. It is estimated that the global market value of innovative products in this sector could reach around £488 billion by 2050, and that on average, most organisations can easily save at least 28% of their energy costs with low-cost actions. 

In the UK, innovative energy saving measures in non-domestic buildings could save 18Mt CO₂ by 2020 and 86 MtCO₂ by 2050, depending upon the rate at which the measures can be deployed. [i]

In the USA, American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act was passed at the end of 2012, a modification of the Enabling Energy Savings Innovations Act. This promises to produce a boom in the sector. The U.S. market for energy efficiency and services topped $5.1 billion in 2011, according to Pike Research, and is now expected to reach $16 billion in sales by 2020. 

The need for energy managers

For city management, measuring sustainability, of which energy use and therefore carbon emissions form a great part, is becoming a way of measuring the quality of management overall. For a city to be truly sustainable it must totally transform the way it works, with its employees, citizens, investors and its supply chains.

This effect has yet to filter down. Nevertheless, for city executives to have appointed energy managers signifies that they have acknowledged the importance of sustainable energy use.

Then there are the tens of thousands of building managers and facility managers in urban environments, only part of whose responsibilities includes being responsible for energy management. With their labour, management often saves a considerable amount of money, more than enough to pay their salary, and reduces the risk exposure to volatile energy price increases. 

But it is not just money they save, although that may be their employer's primary motivation. They are also saving carbon, which is increasingly a quantified activity featuring in company annual reports, and as such doing their bit to challenge the advance of global warming and promote the good reputation of the company for sustainable housekeeping.

The UK Government’s 2020 Energy Efficiency Marginal Abatement Cost Curve. The graph quantifies the lifetime cost-benefits of various energy efficiency measures across different sectors, and is discussed in more detail in Chapter 10. The y-axis represents the cost effectiveness of a measure, each of which is represented by an individual coloured bar. Any measure which costs more than it saves over its lifetime is represented by a bar which goes over the horizontal axis. The overall message is that the vast majority save money over their lifetime. The net present values are calculated in 2012 terms. The EE-MACC is based on an estimate of the feasible rollout of energy efficiency measures and takes into account supply constraints for energy efficient products, only including technology that is already available in the market.

Legal requirements

In the USA, there is no nationwide law governing the energy efficiency of existing buildings. Little has been done in this sector and there is huge potential for savings, despite the encouragement of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. These have provided finance for improvements, for instance under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program. The building sector is the largest consumer of energy in the United States, around 41% of total US energy use; the industrial sector is also responsible for 20% of energy use.

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary standard for sustainable buildings. An example of a certificate is on the right. LEED includes a standard of measurement for defining a 'green building', and achieving LEED certification is a means of recognising environmental leadership in the building industry and raising awareness of the benefits of environmental building.

It is based on well-founded scientific standards and incorporates sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.  Mandatory Residential and Commercial Energy Conservation Ordinances (RECOs and CECOs) have been implemented by a handful of municipalities as a way to bring the existing building stock closer in line with the energy code requirements for newer buildings.

In 2009, President Obama mandated federal agencies to make significant reductions in energy consumption, hoping that government would "lead by example" by upgrading many of its facilities. Two years later, the administration tried to jumpstart that work by setting a goal for federal agencies to enter into at least $2 billion of energy efficiency projects within two years. In President Obama's second term, this trend is likely to be accelerated.

In Europe, the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive has a target of 20% energy savings for the EU as a whole by 2020. It mandates energy audits and energy management by large firms, and stipulates that 3% of public buildings that are owned and occupied by central government must be renovated every year.

The recast EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) was transposed into national legislation in 2012. Member States are required to set energy use at cost-optimal level, and be measured for a whole system, (such as a heating system) rather than at a product level, such as a boiler. This will have to be proven by the installer or designer.

In the UK, energy performance standards are set for new buildings and benchmarks for existing buildings. 'Consequential improvements'  are required to the energy efficiency of buildings undergoing refurbishment, and all buildings must have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) available when offered for sale or rent. A small number of buildings are exempt (e.g. some heritage buildings). The EPCs of large buildings to which the public has access must be displayed in the form of Display Energy Certificates, pictured right.

The UK's Energy Efficiency Strategy hopes to achieve 196 TWh of energy savings in 2020, with a reduction of around 11% over the business-as-usual baseline, and a reduction in carbon emissions of 41 MtCO₂. The Energy Management Alliance, a forum for the UK’s energy management companies and industry bodies, foresees a huge growth in the sector as a result. However, recent political infighting may dampen this expectation.

Barriers to energy efficiency

Changing to LED street lighting can save
a lot of energy and maintenance costs.If energy efficiency is such a good idea, why is it not practiced more widely? The UK’s Energy Efficiency Strategy has identified several barriers:

1. Misaligned financial incentives: the person responsible for making energy efficiency improvements is not always the one who will receive the benefits of these actions;

2. Lack of management buy-in: boards may think that energy lacks strategic importance, in comparison to other imperatives, especially if energy costs are a small proportion of overall business costs;

3. Hassle costs: perceived disruption caused by making the improvements, for example building works or production lines halted;

4. Lack of awareness: many people are unaware of just how much can be saved by taking even simple measures. There is a lack of access to trusted and appropriate information, especially at key decision-making times. Even when present, information may only be generic and not specific and tailored to the situation;

5. Lack of supply: the energy efficiency market itself is under developed, with a supply chain that is still gaining maturity in some areas;

6. Lack of financial support: often financiers fail to appreciate the benefits of investment in energy efficiency, especially if the financial argument is complex. Companies are often reluctant to invest in energy efficiency, seeking short payback times, even if a project is cost-effective at usual interest rates, or on a life-cycle basis.

This article is an extract from my new book, the Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings published this month by Earthscan. This comprehensive book covers how to:

• conduct an energy audit
• plan a monitoring and verification strategy
• make any energy-saving campaign successful
• evaluate and make the financial case for energy-saving measures
• make use of free energy for lighting and managing heat loss and gain.

It also contains special chapters on:

• ventilation, heating and cooling
• demand management through automated systems
• lighting
• most requirements of industrial facilities
• regulatory requirements in Britain, Europe and the United States
• the use of smart meters and monitoring
• how to achieve zero energy buildings
• the use of renewable energy.

I wrote it to be of assistance for all professional energy, building and facilities managers, energy consultants, students, trainees and academics. It takes you from basic concepts to the latest advanced thinking, with principles applicable anywhere in the world and in any climate.

‘Provides a complete introduction to the subject of energy management, and will, I’m sure, be useful to both trainees and novices and industry veterans seeking an updating of their knowledge with the latest developments. David is a clear writer, who manages to make the most technical subjects accessible. He has a clear overview of all sectors and technologies.’ —Nick Bent, Editor of Energy Focus Magazine

[i]  UK Energy Efficiency Strategy, Department of Energy and Climate Change, November 2012

How businesses can become more sustainable and increase profits

In the drive to make industry more sustainable, when authorities attempt to pressurise the sector, squeals of "But jobs!" and "Competitiveness!" are heard.

Different sectors within industry respond to the "green-and-clean-yourself" call with varying degrees of enthusiasm. High energy users like cement and steel are notorious squealers. But all of them can benefit from not having a knee-jerk reaction and paying attention to leaders within their sectors who are heeding that call and seeing as a result a turnaround in their fortunes.

Because for an organisation to be able to survive into the future, it has to see all of its operations – its requirements in terms of materials, energy and water, its fixed assets – as equal in importance to its core activity.

Case study: Low carbon tomatoes

Terra Nitrogen, a company based in Billingham in the northeast of England, produces nitrogen chemicals and methanol for industry, but as an unfortunate by-product also produces a lot of carbon dioxide emissions.

It linked up with John Bader Ltd, which now diverts carbon dioxide from the plant into 38 acres of greenhouses erected next door to grow tomatoes.

Terra Nitrogen is also supplying electricity to the greenhouses, allowing them to continue production through the winter and removing the need for the UK’s supermarkets to import so many tomatoes from Spain.

The benefits include the successful reuse of waste heat, reduction of 12,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and the creation of 65 new jobs.

Case study: Unilever

Unilever is a much larger company that is leading the way. Its CEO, Paul Polman, is the visionary behind a Sustainable Living Plan, launched in November 2010, which seeks to double sales and halve the environmental impact of its products.

It is working. He believes that this fundamental shift in the business paradigm is partly a reaction to the financial crisis, from a rules-based one back to a principles-based one, but it has financial benefits.

Procurement of new equipment

It follows that a policy like this should translate into a procurement strategy. Part of any such strategy should be to purchase equipment that is sustainable and consumes the least energy, or has the least environmental impact, over its lifetime compared to comparable products.

Lists of these products, together with standards, may be found on the website of the U.S. Energy and Efficiency and Renewable Energy office, and on the European Market Transformation Programme website, with further information on the Energy Using Products Directive website.

Standby power load should also be a choice factor in procurement. For instance, US federal agencies must purchase products with a standby power level of 1W or less. Standby power typically occurs when the product is switched off for not performing its primary purpose. The standby power data centre lists compliant products.

Sustainable procurement is a specialism in itself. Specimen framework agreements to ensure the supply of sustainable goods and services are available from the website of the UK Sustainable Procurement Centre of Excellence (currently down but may be available via the UK National Sustainable Public Procurement Programme (NSPPP)). There, you might also find a knowledge base of information on sustainable procurement, commodity areas, carbon reduction, whole life costing, legislation, toolkits, case studies and best practice.

For ICT, ENERGY STAR® is a voluntary labelling scheme for products which use less than a specified energy consumption in typical use. It was originally developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for common computing equipment, but is now a joint activity with the European Commission.

This means that specification of ENERGY STAR compliance in tenders is compatible with EU procurement rules. A list of compliant models is at www.euenergystar.org.

A key factor in the energy consumption of ICT is user behaviour. It is now possible to purchase software which monitors actual PC use within an enterprise. Advanced versions permit energy managers to set power policies that reflect a certain level of usage, reducing both energy consumption and carbon emissions. They reveal when users are using their PCs by monitoring key strokes and mouse movements.

Energy managers can then match the power state of each subset of PCs, by location, with the activity level of employees. They can also identify unused or underutilised PCs on the network, further eliminating the management overheads of maintaining these machines; ensure that a computer in a low-power state can be woken up and accessed on demand when a user is working remotely; and that applications which prevent a PC from being powered down can be overridden while the PC is not in use.

Supply chain optimisation

It then becomes necessary for businesses and organisations seeking to reduce their carbon footprint to turn attention to that of their products and services, and this involves looking at their supply chains.
According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), supply chain optimisation can result in up to 60 per cent of energy intensity reductions. For example, in food production and distribution, much perfectly good food is wasted due to spoilage, both in the supply chain and at the retail level. This means that all of the energy embedded in the food is wasted as well.

By modelling the supply system throughout the chain, opportunities may be identified to significantly reduce waste by changing processing, handling, packaging and delivery systems. The result is frequently fresher food delivered faster and of a more consistent quality. There is less waste and greater savings.

Case study: PepsiCo

UK snack foods manufacturer Walkers, and its parent company PepsiCo, have been working with the British Carbon Trust on energy efficiency and carbon management. They have saved over 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, reducing energy bills by approximately £225,000 (US$350,000).

Having done this they moved on to looking at their supply chain in order to demonstrate a continuing commitment to emissions reduction. They began by looking at their raw material production, which includes potato and corn producers, sunflower oil and vegetable oil manufacturers, corrugated cardboard manufacturers and so on.

They then began to optimise the distribution of raw materials using logistics and network planning. They have already optimised the manufacture of products. The next step was product distribution, again tackled by the network strategic planning department. Finally, they wanted to make sure that redundant packaging could be recycled.

Energy Management in Industry

This is an extract from my latest book, Energy Management in Industry: The Earthscan Expert Guide, which is a companion to my Energy Management in Buildings, published in November 2013.

Energy demand reduction is fast becoming a business activity for all companies and organisations because it can increase profits regardless of the nature of their core activity.

The International Energy Agency believes that industry could improve its energy efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by almost a third using the best available practices and technologies.

This guide looks at the many ways available to energy managers to achieve or even exceed this level of performance, including: base-lining consumption planning a monitoring and verification strategy metering (including smart, wireless metering) energy supply management motors and drives compressed air and process controls.

It also looks at topics covered in greater detail in its companion volume, Energy Management in Buildings: insulation, lighting, renewable heating, cooling and HVAC systems. Uniquely, it includes a whole chapter on greening data centres. Further chapters examine minimising water use and how to make the financial case, both to prioritise measures for cost effectiveness, and to get management on board.

This title is aimed at all professional energy, industry and facilities managers, energy consultants, students, trainees and academics and can be read alongside training for ISO 50001 - Energy.

'David Thorpe's book Energy Management in Industry is an easy to read book about how you can save energy in your company…He does this without [needing] to over complicate it with technical details and scientific formula. I enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to energy managers and anyone who would want to reduce energy consumption.' - Kit Oung, Energy Consultant and author of Energy Management in Business, Committee Member, British Standards Institute BSI-KSA.

Selected Table of Contents

Preface. Introduction. 1. Measuring Energy Consumption 2. Metering 3. Airtightness and Insulation 4. Lighting, Daylighting and Controls 5. Heating and Cooling 6. Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Systems 7. Energy Reduction Technologies 8. Motors, Drives and Compressed Air 9. Refrigeration 10. Process Controls 11. Data Centres 12. Minimising Water Use 13. Making the Financial Case Conclusion. Appendix.

New prize to stimulate dynamic demand innovation

Stewart Reid, Future Networks Project Manager for SSE’s NINES project, says dynamic demand response will make wind power more effective and efficient.

A Dynamic Demand Challenge Prize has been launched to help meet the challenge of satisfying ever-increasing demands on the UK’s power grid, as highlighted by last week’s Ofgem report on tightening electricity margins.

The prize is the initiative of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation, and hopes to find new ways of managing demand to shift electricity consumption from peak to off-peak times, reducing carbon emissions and better responding to demands on UK energy supplies.

Solutions will depend upon the smart grid: new data-driven, demand side response-enabled products, technologies or services, that reduce carbon emissions by shifting energy use to off peak times or towards renewable generation.

Dynamic demand, or demand side response (DSR), is the exchange of information between electronic devices, responding to signals from the grid directly or indirectly.

It will be built into the capacity market, being created by the new Energy Bill, to can help shift electricity consumption away from peak hours where electricity consumption is high, or enable greater usage of excess electricity generation from renewables, as well as help maximise the use of the smart grid.

A number of trials are taking place at the moment through initiatives such as Low Carbon London, DECC/Ofgem’s Smart Grid Forum and the Low Carbon Network Fund.

Currently the UK’s biggest smart grid initiative is a £54 million scheme called the Customer-led network revolution in which 14,000 homes and businesses are finding ways to reduce both their energy spend and carbon emissions.

The project includes decentralised generation and demand reduction through efficient smart appliances and is trialling demand response through the combination of generation and flexibly operated appliances. It is supported by Low Carbon Network Fund, with partners UK Power Networks, Northern PowerGrid, British Gas, Durham University and EA Technology.

A new project called Smart Hooky is now trialling a range of new technologies to create a community–scale smart grid that will help Western Power Distribution understand how a rural community uses electricity at different times of the day in order to manage peak demands and let electricity networks accommodate more renewable energy.

The Dynamic Demand Challenge Prize will offer incentives, financial support and expert guidance for shortlisted projects, with a prize of £50,000 for the solution that demonstrates the most significant impact.

Constance Agyeman, development manager, Nesta’s Centre for Challenge Prizes, commented: “The Dynamic Demand Challenge Prize will support innovations that create a measurable shift in energy use. This is important because there is increasing demand on the UK’s electricity supplies and we therefore need to find new ways to manage this.”

Partners in the challenge include the Centre for Carbon Measurement, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and National Grid. Neil Hughes, NG's head of technology, explains, “Balancing the grid will become more complex as more renewable generation comes onto the system and our goal is to help new service providers understand those challenges and develop technologies to meet that growing need”.

Jane Burston, head of the Centre for Carbon Measurement at the National Physical Laboratory notes, “Climate change and a secure, clean energy supply are two of the biggest challenges of our time. Demand side response is a critical step in supporting the shift in supply towards renewable generation. This will only be successful with engaging tools and technologies we want to use in our homes and offices.”

The challenge is open to entries from anyone across the European Union, but the solution must be applied within a UK context.

Northern Isles New Energy Solutions (NINES)

NINES is another important dynamic demand response solution that is being developed by SSE in Scotland. It aims to support Shetland’s sustainable energy future by developing and managing the electricity distribution network more effectively.

Measures used here include replacing old inefficient storage and water heaters with modern 'smart' storage heaters, and adding a new electric boiler to the existing district heating system, both of which help to balance the electricity network.

This is crucial, says Tim Rotheray of the Combined Heat and Power Association, because currently wind turbines generating electricity that is not needed at that point in time are paid constraint payments per megawatt not to feed their power into the grid.

To combat this waste, often seized upon by opponents of wind power as a reason to oppose wind farms, the power can instead be stored in the form of hot water using the systems being installed here, even diverting the power for a few seconds, as when there are spikes of generation during blustery weather.

NINES is also deploying new technology that will allow more small-scale renewable generators to connect to the network and introducing new commercial arrangements to encourage businesses to change the times at which they use most energy, similar to ones that will be in the new capacity market.

Finally, it is also installing a 1MW battery, part-funded by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, at Lerwick Power Station.

The project will help SSE plan for the replacement of its existing Lerwick Power Station, which is nearing the end of its useful life, with a smaller station than would otherwise be required.

This type of demand side response solution is already used in Denmark, for example in the Skagen District Heating system, which utilises electric as well as gas-fired CHP boilers.

Silver Springs

Silver Springs is a company which already has 10 years' experience in this area in north America and Asia Pacific. With a customer-focussed attitude to smart meters, it works directly with end users and communities and has recently established an office in the UK.

Their Oklahoma Smart Hours Programme is a demand response initiative to encourage customers to shift their energy use to off-peak hours that works by establishing local communications infrastructure and installing programmable communicating thermostats to control air conditioning units at times of peak demand.

The programme has helped 44,000 users save an average of $191 each, and delivered more than 67 megawatts of load reduction in 2012.

In the UK, another pioneer is The Ouse Valley Energy Services Company Ltd, formed by members of the Transition Town Lewes Energy Group, which includes decentralised generation and demand reduction and is currently investigating local electricity and heat distribution networks for villages and towns within the District.

The community-owned MOZES (Meadows Ozone Energy Services Company) is also delivering decentralised generation and demand reduction, with the aim of helping the community to become self-sufficient in energy use, and then to become an energy generating community.

All of these initiatives are exploring and developing models that fit with the new paradigm of using available low carbon energy in real time more efficiently, one of the chief challenges of moving to a low carbon future, that is being supported by the NESTA challenge.

2013 will be the year energy management grows up

The Government continues to claim that it is delivering certainty to potential investors in low carbon technology, while these selfsame investors continue to say they don't have it.

The new Energy Bill and the Finance Bill 2013 all contain reams of assurances or regulations intended to balance the competing requirements of the two wings of the Coalition. This is represented in Westminster shorthand by Osborne, Energy Minister John Hayes and Environment Secretary Owen Patersen and 100 or so back-bench MPs on the one hand, and Greg Barker plus many Lib-Dem MPs on the other hand. Energy Secretary Ed Davey leans towards the latter rather than the former grouping, but manages to defend DECC's turf at least some of the time against the parsimonious tendency of the Treasury.

I'm sorry, I'll rephrase that: the above two documents are intended to balance the competing requirements of keeping the lights on for the UK, improving energy security and combating climate change.

Like the resolution called The Doha Gateway Package, which came out of the latest UNFCCC climate talks (vague ideas to do little until 2015), they represent both a victory for business-as-usual and a beanfest for legions of accountants and consultants who will be needed to interpret them for everyone else. In failing to tackle the dangers revealed by the latest evidence of the rate of climate change, they will satisfy no one but these players.

As the world races to increasingly certain climate disaster later this century, governments' payoffs to the bankers to compensate them for the mistakes they themselves made five years ago, mean that they have a plausible excuse not to cough up the mere 1% of global GDP required to ameliorate and mitigate the worst excesses of climate change.

Even as Chancellor George Osborne simplifies the Carbon Reduction Commitment, for the benefit of businesses affected by it, he introduces even more complex rules, governing the Carbon Price Support (CPS), Climate Change Levy (CCL), Carbon Price Floor (CPF), Capacity Payments and Feed-in Tariffs with Contracts for Difference, terms only civil servants could have dreamed up.

And this is after business complained that an earlier version of the Bill was too complicated.

The Gas Strategy promises support for gas extraction but gives no support for a new gas power station.

As I prophesised at the beginning of this year, the prognosis for concrete action on the construction of a new nuclear power station is still unclear, a year later, despite approval being granted by the Health and Safety Executive for NNB GenCo's European Pressurised Water Reactor design, because no one knows from where the money to pay for it will come.

Offshore wind power remains a reasonably safe bet, but only for turbines erected before 2018, when the Renewables Obligation gives way to the carbon price floor. And no one knows yet how that will work, because the price of carbon insists on staying frustratingly low.

All of which means that at the end of 2012, hopes are pinned on the one set of actions that is easier and cheaper to attain than any of the above. This has been a dark horse, largely ignored by government for decades, but now racing up on the outside with a chance to clinch a win, if the imaginative proposals in a recent consultation document are implemented.

I'm talking about energy efficiency of course. Demand reduction is already included in the Energy Bill's Capacity Market, but the suggestion of businesses and individuals being given premium payments for each kilowatt–hour saved by installing energy-efficient equipment are the centrepoint of last November's proposals for reducing energy demand, published by DECC.

The payments would work in a similar way to feed-in tariffs, but instead of being paid for generating renewable electricity, bill-payers would be paid for not consuming electricity, a solution that is, paradoxically, cheaper for energy companies than building new generators. It was first pioneered by Californian utility Pacific Gas and Electric in the 1970s.

The consultation contains other exciting ideas: an energy supplier obligation for the non-domestic sector to encourage energy companies to insulate business premises, similar to the Energy Company Obligation in the domestic sector, and financial incentives to encourage the replacement of out of date equipment like motors, boilers and fridges with new, more efficient versions.

Financiers say they are seeking certainty from Government. The CBI complains at the length of time it is taking for policies to become law. The Federation of Small Businesses and the manufacturers’ organisation, the EEF, complain about carbon taxes.

But investing in energy efficiency has always been able to provide certainty. Marginal abatement cost curves of energy measures, like those provided by DECC, McKinsey, Mott MacDonald or the Committee on Climate Change, consistently put it up front, on the left, below the line. Sure, different measures have different the internal rates of return, and they are dependent on future energy prices and inflation rates. Yet this is familiar territory for business.

It's just that energy management has not so far attracted the attention of senior executives. But from now on it must and will increasingly do so, especially if these proposals, which we should all back, are made law.

The absolute conclusion is: we can wait forever for government to act, and when it does it will never satisfy each and every one of us. But the logic of energy management, correctly applied, will always yield investor certainty. It will save carbon, save money, and create jobs.

The NHS could easily save £170 million through basic energy efficiency

The Department of Health should force the NHS to save energy and money, just as the higher education sector’s capital funding is linked to meeting carbon reduction targets.

The NHS believes it spends £1.7 billion a year on energy procurement, according to the Department of Health.

Not only this, but, with all those ambulances and other traffic, it accounts for an astonishing 5% of all road traffic in England.

Moreover, the NHS in England alone spends £20 billion every year on goods and services.

Add this all up, and you can see why the organisation is not only one of the largest employers in Europe, it's one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the UK: at around 3.7 million tonnes every year.

Let's concentrate for the moment on energy use in buildings, although it forms a minority of all that energy use.

An experienced director of energy management at a prominent construction firm recently told me that he believed that using simple industry best practice, the NHS could easily cut 10% of their energy consumption, which equates to £170 million a year of taxpayers' money, with simple, quick-win energy efficiency measures.

That's a lot of money, and in these straitened times, you would think that hospitals and primary care trusts would be anxious to make these savings.

Seven weeks ago, this energy management expert met with officials in the Department of Health (DH), and asked them why these simple changes were not being implemented.

He was told by a number of hospital estates teams that any cash spend is, in general, always prioritised in hospital budgets for life-saving equipment rather than things like smart meters, more efficient boilers, or lighting and heating controls.

This is not unreasonable. So, he suggested to the official that one way round this might be for the DH to set energy-saving targets, in the same way that it does for reducing waiting lists. Energy (or carbon) saving targets have been set, with impressive results, in the university sector.

In this sector, the provision of capital funding has been explicitly linked to performance against carbon management plans.

Parallel to this, a scheme called The Revolving Green Fund, managed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, provides recoverable grants to help higher education institutions reduce emissions. Institutions repay the funds through the savings they make.

This will contribute to a 43% reduction of carbon emissions by 2020 compared to 2005.

In answer to this suggestion, the DH official replied: “setting targets is not our direction of travel".

When it was put to him that in this case, the energy-saving would not happen, the official repeated his mantra.

I think that the comparison with the university sector is appropriate.

Institutions have to provide annual records of all their greenhouse gas emissions from every single activity, as part of their estates management record, to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

This is an activity that all estate, facility, building and energy managers should be doing anyway. But it doesn't always happen, and mandating this activity focuses minds on where cost savings can be made.

The initiative in this sector is a combination of carrot and stick. It is merely following a strategy which is known to work: reward success, provide funding to make the change, and penalties for poor performance.

Anyone who works in the NHS or who has dealings with it, knows the phenomenal amount of waste that occurs.

We know that its prime directive is to save lives. But there is a comparison to be made with every single commercial business: its core function might be the production of widgets, but the cost of energy affects the bottom line, and wherever attention is paid to this, profits rise.

The NHS is no different.

It's not as though there isn't help there already: from the Carbon Trust (although it is not specifically targeted at the NHS but at the public sector in general), and, through using BREEAM for healthcare buildings, commissioned by the Department of Health and Welsh Health Estates, as the environmental assessment method for new healthcare buildings.

But BREEAM is not mandatory, and is often left out of PFI contracts. In fact, in respect of PFI, many problems arise from the fact that the construction company, the client and the funder have different energy objectives and there is little joined up thinking.

Moreover, the end user of a building is not always responsible for paying the bills, meaning that they do not have an incentive to save energy. Only some accounts have a dedicated energy manager.

One consultant I spoke to told of a case where, if the client turns the lights off, then they are deemed to be in breach of contract, and so lights are left on unnecessarily. Given the lifetime of PFI contracts, many unresolved problems may stick around for between 15 and 35 years.

The Department of Health provides advice on estates and facilities management but it has not been updated for three years and this particular webpage has been archived.

The Health Protection Agency produced a report this year called “Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2012". Looking at ozone pollution alone, one alarming statistic reads that their are already 11,900 from premature deaths per year from ozone pollution, but a further 14,000 to 15,000 could result by 2030 as a result of climate change.

There's a certain irony in the fact that the NHS and the DH are fully aware of warnings like this, and yet are unwilling to set targets to reduce this number of deaths by reducing carbon emissions from NHS activities, never mind the fact that this will also save money.

And let's not forget: saving 10% of the energy consumed by the NHS would remove the need for the construction of one nuclear power station, or three gas-fired power stations.

Joined-up thinking, anyone?

We need an army of energy super-warriors, to save the country billions in bills

800 organisations who signed up to the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) have yet to invest in significant energy management programme, according to the information published on the energy efficiency league website.

Why are these organisations, which represent 40% of those signed up to the commitment, yet to take advantage of the considerable financial, carbon and energy savings they could make?

One answer, postulated by the authors of a new report, is simply a lack of knowledge of the returns that can be expected at board level from a programme of energy efficiency at board level.

But why don't they know? Surely you'd think there were enough people telling them?

Well, perhaps one reason for this is that they don't have anyone in the company with sufficient clout to identify the opportunities and to persuade them to make the change.

The authors of this report should know what they are talking about. They're the energy managers of top companies: Stephen Barker, the Head of Energy Efficiency & Environmental Care at Siemens; Richard Tarboton, Director of Energy and Carbon at BT; Mervyn Bowden, the Head of Energy Management at Marks & Spencer; and Trevor Seddon, Johnson Controls' Director of Energy Consulting.

Notice that none of these are actually called energy managers. It's a sign of how the discipline is changing.

Their report, the Evolution of the Energy Manager, is published by Acre, a recruitment consultancy specialising in corporate responsibility, energy efficiency, carbon, environmental and health and safety.

For these energy efficiency slackers, it's not persuasive enough to cite examples of other companies who are saving money by saving energy, such as BT who saved ￡35m in two years from its programme, with investments of less than ￡15m per year.

Or M&S, whose Plan A generated ￡70m in profit in 2010, with energy efficiency being the biggest contributor.

Look, here are a few more examples of financial paybacks from selected energy efficiency programmes:

Company	Investment (￡m)	Payback (years)
McDonalds	10.0	2.0
Siemens	90.0	2.5
3M	43.0	1.0
Barts & London NHS	1.2	1.5
Imperial Tobacco	2.5	3.1
SAP	1.4	3.5
Johnson Controls	8.1	3.1
Average	22.3	2.4

Source: The Green Monday Energy Efficiency White Paper.

If you are an organisation which hasn't yet begun to take seriously the idea of energy management, then it's quite possible you would just look at this list and say to yourself, “Fine, but my organisation is not like any of these companies. They can afford to do something like this, and our needs are quite different".

Magic numbers

Well, surprise surprise, this isn't true. BT's Richard Tarboton says that any company can find energy savings, and the way to start doing it is to use an economic tool called the Marginal Abatement Cost Curves (MACC) to persuade members of the board of the economic case. [This link is to a page that tells you how to make one in Excel.]

MACCs crunch numbers to present the 'whole life costings' of taking a particular measure and can easily establish an argument for spending in order to save.

MACC curves enable a visual comparison between different projects, comparing their cost to implement and the amount of carbon or energy they can save.

They can also help you figure out what the price of carbon needs to make implementing a project more financially viable than not doing so.

The warrior wielding this powerful tool should be someone with leadership qualities, someone who is directly connected to the company's core business strategy.

This is not your traditional image of an energy manager. Maybe 20 years ago he (and an energy manager was usually male) could be characterised as someone technical, nerdy and permanently attached to a clipboard.

They would be marginalised, relatively powerless, and, if they were lucky to have an office at all, it would probably be under the stairs or in the boiler room.

Their role would previously have been more to do with the procurement of energy. Now it is just as much to do with its demand management and reduction. In other words, it is a strategic role.

This is why modern energy managers need to have super-powers; not just able to do their job but also possess super leadership qualities and super communication skills.

They need to be able to get across to their colleagues that issues like energy, carbon management and sustainability are not peripheral, separate topics, but indistinguishable from any other matter that is of primary concern to the organisation.

Just as ‘the environment’ can no longer legitimately be seen as something which is ‘out there’ and divorced from human activity, or indeed an individual's very day-to-day existence, so sustainability and energy use are a facet of everything any individual in an organisation does or has responsibility for.

The modern energy manager has to be able to make the case to anyone who says they don't have the time to think about energy use, that it is, on the contrary, part of their job function to think about energy use.

And, increasingly, companies employ Chief Sustainability Officers, for whom energy management is just a subset of their responsibilities.

The larger the company, the larger the energy management team, which will include members with the following skills: the ability to manage, work as part of a team, do marketing, management and accounting, have a knowledge of appropriate standards, data management, technical matters, efficiency technologies, generation technologies and keep up to speed with regulations.

As M&S' Mervyn Bowden says, “The modern energy manager needs to have wide commercial experience, with a full range of management skills to cope with a demanding role.

"A role which includes large budgets, managing risk, a need to influence others to achieve your aims, programme management and people management - to name but a few”.

In other words, cross someone with the charisma of Angelina Jolie the organisational ability of Sebastian Coe (who's organising the Olympics), the business sense of Richard Branson, and the intellectual prowess of Brian May, and you're close to what it takes: a waste-fighting superhero.

Currently, there are up to 3000 energy managers in the country, according to ESTA, the Energy Services and Technology Association, the energy management industry body.

As their responsibilities grow, so does the salary they can expect to earn.

Beginning at between ￡22,000 and ￡33,000, after five to ten years' experience they can earn up to ￡70,000.

Beyond that, according to recruiting experts Hays, at least 10% can expect a salary over ￡88,000, with some earning over ￡100,000.

Not bad.

The average (meaning based on average experience) is ￡44,000.

This is a direct measure of their value to the company in terms of saving money.

In other words, a good energy manager is worth their weight in gold, and essential to any serious organisation that wants to thrive in today's increasingly difficult conditions.

An often unsung superhero fighting an essential battle in the war against waste and climate change. We need an army of them.

Big organisations' carbon emissions made public for the first time

The public is now able to see for the first time which companies and organisations are making a real effort to reduce their carbon emissions and which are not.

The carbon savers and the carbon slackers have all been made visible under the first Performance League Tables of the Energy Efficiency Scheme, published today by the Environment Agency.

This mandatory scheme, which was introduced in 2008, was originally touted to contain about 3,000 UK organisations whose half hourly electricity consumption totalled more than 6,000 MWh per year (equivalent to approximately £500,000 annual spend) in 2008.

In the end the table contains 2,106 businesses due to exemptions under Climate Change Agreements (CCAs) or EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to prevent businesses being taxed twice.

Between them they are responsible for up to 10% of the UK’s emissions.

The tables show the relative performance of all participants in CRC against their Early Action Metric (%), which represents the average percentage of the proportion of non-mandatory CRC electricity or gas supplies measured through voluntarily installed 'automatic meter reading' meters or dynamic supply in year 1 and CRC emission coverage by the Carbon Trust Standard or equivalent.

The better an organisation performs in terms of cutting its emissions, the higher it appears in the annual performance league table.

Twenty two organisations have scored 100% in the 'early action metric', to take joint top spot, including (thankfully for them) Ofgem, DECC and Manchester United Football Club, who join British American Tobacco, Center Parcs, and several NHS foundation trusts.

At the bottom of the league come many hundreds more organisations who scored zero or close to zero.

They include some big names like Veolia waste services, Kingfisher group, IKEA, Standard Life, American Express, Bombardier, Care UK, Citibank, Coca Cola HBC Northern Ireland, CRC MANAGEMENT II LIMITED (ironically), Crown UK Holdings, Dell computers, HMRC, Kingspan insulation, and many London Boroughs.

Also shamed at the bottom are the pension schemes of National Grid and BT, many other NHS trusts, Orange Business Holdings, Pepsico, Rio Tinto, Carphone Warehouse, Thomson Reuters and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, Virgin Atlantic and many universities.

The problem with the ranking is that the reason for a zero ranking may simply be that no smart meters were installed. This is especially interesting in the case of several who have shouted very loudly about their green credentials, like IKEA.

The Carbon Trust's mantra has always been that 'what is not measured cannot be saved', and so the CRC is a definite encouragement at the very least for participants to install meters.

Errors in the data

Errors are already showing up in the data.

IKEA has complained that it entered its data imcorrectly (and this corrects our earlier version of this piece) when it input its emissions usng figures under the Carbon Trust Standard. In fact its ranking should be 381st not 1299th.

However, the EA website says that all participants were given a chance to check and verify their data until 27 September.

They say that "Since then a small number of organisations have notified us of amendments which, had they been reported before 27 September, may have changed the organisations' positions in the PLT.

"This PLT has been independently validated by AEA Technology and is fixed based on the 27 September reported data."

Their website does say that waste company Veolia's position is also wrong. Since it is able to claim Energy Generating Credits, its net emissions as defined under the CRC are negative.

But the CRC scheme design did not envisage there would be zero or negative emitters when calculating the Early Action Metric (EAM) score, and so Veolia's early actions are not properly reflected in the Performance League Table!

Where the net result is zero or negative emissions, the CRC Registry cannot calculate a score for the EAM based on the amount of emissions covered by a carbon management certification scheme regardless of actions undertaken by a participant.

Moreover, Pepsico, also ranked 1299th, became in January the first company in the world to use te Carbon Trust's Carbon Product Footprinting as a management tool to drive green growth across its supply chain.

Its activity in this and other respects should earn it some Early Action Metric points.

Also there is no credit given in the criteria for improvements companies have made as part of a Climate Change Agreement.

This means that they appear far down in terms of performance when, by definition, of being part of an agreement they have substantially improved their energy efficiency and been taking energy-saving measures since 2001.

EEF, the manufacturers organization, was quick to criticse this. It s Head of Climate & Environment, Gareth Stace, said this "does not fill us with hope that government has fully taken stakeholder views into account," and this may "not bring about the behavioral changes that government is hoping for.

"Many companies will be worried that this mis-representative data will affect their reputation in un-warranted ways.”

Scorecards

It is possible to look closely at each business' responses.

Here, you find out for example that Manchester United, despite coming joint top, gave no answer to the questions about whether it discloses carbon emission reduction targets in its annual reporting, has anyone in charge of energy management or "actively engage employees to reduce carbon emissions at work".

A spokesman for the Environment Agency, said: "The 2011 league table shows that over 60 per cent of organisations have taken action by installing smart meters and obtaining a certificate for 'good energy management' from the Carbon Trust or other accreditation scheme.

"The table also shows participants' annual carbon emissions - although they are not ranked on them this year."

As well as reducing carbon emissions, the scheme is intended to help participants save money by reducing their energy bills.

John Field, Director of Power Efficiency Carbon Management, which provides CRC compliance services to a number of major corporate and public sector clients, says the process has been a "wake-up call," and helped to "take energy management out of the plant room and into the board room". Compliance levels have been high, he says, including all the cases PECM has dealt with.

"Given the background of rising energy prices, this is a real opportunity for bodies to get to grips with managing their energy use. It's the first time they have had to make a concerted effort to create a separate budget for energy use."

Participants had to submit their first reports, describing their energy consumption from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011, by the end of July to the Environment Agency.

They contain a CRC Footprint Report and an Annual Report, which accounts for their energy usage from all sources across all of their sites.

The Footprint Report is important because it defines which emission sources they have to report every year over the next three years.

Crucially, it demonstrates whether at least 90% of emissions are covered by any of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), a Climate Change Agreement (CCA) or the CRC.

If this was done effectively, companies would have reduced their costs by 10%, as the pollution sources cannot be changed during this period.

Organisations are also exempted from the Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme if they have a Climate Change Agreement under the EU-ETS.

The Agency has now finished verifying and comparing these figures and published the first of its annual league tables which enable everyone to see how well, or how poorly, participants have done.

The idea is to name and shame or praise the supermarkets, universities and other bodies who are registered.

If an organisation makes mistakes, by inaccurately reporting emissions or if it submitted data beyond the deadline, it is subject to fines.

The price of allowances

From April next year, participants must surrender allowances, each one equivalent to one tonne of CO2, by buying enough credit to cover their previous emissions.

Their currently proposed price for these is £12, but the Treasury may change this as a result of the next Budget.

It is likely to be harmonised with the value of the carbon price floor, thought to be going to be £13, for the sake of simplicity.

But given that the market value of carbon now is significantly lower than £12, there are calls from participants for the value of allowances to be lower too, to minimise costs especially from heavy energy users.

However, developers with high initial capital costs, like nuclear and offshore wind, are calling for a high carbon floor price to help provide the finance they need.

The CRC is now a straightforward carbon tax, but originally, under Labour, the proceeds were supposed to be recycled back into energy efficiency.

If the value of an allowance were to be £12, then the Treasury would receive approximately £750m on initial analysis of these figures – significantly less than the £1bn it had said it expected to receive.

What's wrong with businesses that don't save money when it's so easy?

Richard Rugg, the Director of Carbon Trust Programmes, really can't understand why more organisations are not taking advantage of the free advice available from the Trust.

Because at relatively low cost a wide range of industrial, commercial and public sector organisations can cut their energy bills by up to 25% if only they took energy management seriously. Payback periods can be as low as two months - and then it's into the profit zone.

Richard is full of examples of success stories, such as a famous confectionary company who, within two weeks of developing an energy plan, had taken action and was seeing noticeable improvements.

It had set up a team that met on a monthly basis. The end result was a reduction in the energy bill of £22,000 - plus a 22% improvement in production output.

The total cost of the projects implemented was £58,790 giving a simple payback of 2.8 years. The company was also easily able to achieve its Climate Change Agreement targets.

The Trust is reminding businesses and organisations once again that it has a free Advice Line (0800 085 2005) as a first port of call.

But it has also published a new, user-friendly guide to managing energy and is running a free webinar on 28th September, which anyone can sign up to.

“Cutting overheads is rightly high on the agenda at the moment," says Richard. But he is still observing that energy costs don't receive the attention they deserve.

"When it comes to managing energy, ignorance certainly isn't bliss," he continues. "If you don't know where to start, download our new guide, and call our advice line for your free Energy Saving Plan, to see how your organisation could start cutting its energy bills."

Energy management is the systematic use of management and technology to improve an organisation’s energy performance.

But to be fully effective, it needs to be integrated, proactive, and incorporate energy procurement, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The new guide, Energy management – a comprehensive guide to controlling energy use, is part of the Carbon Trust's Expert in Energy series, and contrasts poor practice with good practice.

Examples of poor practice include: treating energy costs as an unquestioned overhead; having no clear or consistent chain of responsibility for energy management; a lack of awareness of energy issues; and procuring energy from the same supplier year-on-year, without a cost comparison.

Good practice would involve treating energy as a strategic issue and its management as an opportunity, with strong guidance from board level permeating through to rewarded action throughout the workforce, with adequate resources and business planning attached to it.

The guide includes an Energy Management Assessment for an organisation to test itself on how energy-aware it already is and where there is room for improvement.

It can then chart its way through a handily-designed 'energy management matrix' of options.

The guide also points readers to other sources of help from the Carbon Trust, such as a document on how to make the business case for a carbon reduction project and get senior decision-makers on board.

Many companies have already taken advantage of the Carbon Trust's support, from household names like Sainsbury's - who used appointed 'energy champions' to save 5% on energy consumption - to small companies like Guala, a manufacturer of bottle closures for the spirits industry, which was able to make energy costs savings of £117,000 per year based on annual electricity savings of 2,000 Mwh, at their plant in Kirkintilloch, Scotland.

Some measures had ridiculously short payback times, and resulted from getting a fresh eye in to examine habitual behaviour patterns and point up ways to change them that meant money wasn't being unnecessarily wasted.

For Guala, this included increasing the temperature of cooling water, which cost £500 but yielded savings of £3,800 per year - a payback period of less than two months.

The same payback period came from an outlay of £2,500 for advanced ultrasonic leak detection equipment plus £8,000 for new nozzles and valves, which eased the load on the air compressors, saving over £58,000 per year.

Many energy efficient technologies qualify under the Enhanced Capital Allowances scheme, and may be written down in the year of purchase.

Furthermore, the Carbon Trust can provide Small and Medium Enterprises or businesses that do not qualify for participation in the Carbon Reduction Commitment, with an interest free loan of up to £400,000, repayable over up to four years, for investment in energy efficiency measures.