How To Reduce Energy Consumption in Office Spaces
Finding ways to reduce overhead costs is an essential aspect of running a successful business. This is especially true for commercial office spaces as they often require a significant amount of energy for lighting, air conditioning, and water consumption. With energy costs steadily increasing amid inflation, it’s become critical for organizations to devote more time and resources to conserving energy across the board.
In addition to the financial incentives, organizations that focus on energy conservation today will be far better prepared to meet worldwide sustainability goals leading into 2030 and beyond. Taking concrete steps to save on energy not only improves your bottom line but also helps to put you ahead of the curve in regards to decreasing your organization’s overall carbon footprint. Here's how to reduce energy consumption in your office buildings and within industries that often contend with high utility bills.
The Importance of Reducing Energy Consumption in Office Spaces
Commercial office spaces are notorious for high energy consumption. Between lighting, heating, cooling, and powering computers or devices, it’s easy to see why. According to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, commercial office spaces account for over a third of all electricity usage in the United States. Unfortunately, many office buildings continue to fall short when it comes to improving their overall energy efficiency.
Due to a lack of investment in sustainability initiatives, smart technologies, and more efficient building upgrades, office spaces often fail to fully utilize all the energy they consume. Energy waste accounts for up to 30% of a typical commercial office building’s overall energy consumption. By prioritizing the reduction of energy consumption at your office space, you can substantially reduce monthly energy bills while positioning your organization as a leader in sustainability.
Tips To Reduce Energy Consumption in Different Industries
Lowering the amount of energy your business consumes doesn’t need to be an uphill battle. With the right knowledge and resources, it’s fairly easy to achieve lower energy bills while minimizing your carbon footprint. Here are some simple tips for reducing energy consumption across various industries.
Identify Energy-Consuming Areas in Office Spaces
First, you’ll want to examine the main sources of your energy burden. Start with identifying the major energy vampires in your office space, such as desktop computers, scanners, refrigerators, and other devices. Office buildings will often keep electronics and appliances like these operating around the clock, and this can be a major contributor to higher energy consumption.
Consider replacing outdated equipment with modern energy-efficient appliances to help keep electricity bills under control. Alternatively, you can invest in smart power strips that will turn off workstations, fax machines, or coffee makers when they’re not in use.
With Attune IoT solutions, it’s easy to track down the energy sinkholes responsible for higher utility bills. Our Real-Time Energy Management System provides comprehensive monitoring and analytics regarding all aspects of your office building’s water and electricity expenses. With Attune, you can quickly determine the cost allocation of energy between specific departments, making it much easier to locate water leaks or energy vampires responsible for higher energy consumption.
Raise Employee Awareness
It’s essential to make sure employees are educated in various ways to conserve energy and how changing certain habits can help lower energy consumption. For instance, encouraging employees to use cold water when washing their hands can make a big difference in lowering water heating costs, especially if you have hundreds of employees on the payroll. You can also encourage workers to turn off or unplug any electronics when not in use to minimize plug load during off hours.
Conduct an Energy Audit in Your School
Conducting an energy audit is an excellent way to get a solid picture of how much energy you’re consuming, where it’s going, and how you can make things more efficient. If you’d like to conserve energy at your school, start with something simple like switching to LED bulbs or investing in low-flow faucets for student bathrooms. For a bigger change, consider ways to implement solar energy.
If your energy audit reveals issues with heat loss, it may be time to explore energy savers like improved insulation or double or triple-pane glass to replace old window panes. Schools should also explore upgrading HVAC systems to keep energy costs under control while simultaneously improving indoor air quality for students.
Invest in Smart Building Technology for Construction
Adopting smart building technology can have a profound impact on the construction industry when it comes to saving time, money, and energy. Deploying indoor air quality sensors throughout the worksite, for example, can provide valuable information regarding airborne contaminants and the optimal ventilation needed to provide a healthy environment for workers. Meanwhile, smart sensors attached to lighting can help to reduce the cost of electricity by automatically turning off whenever the worksite is vacant.
With the Attune IoT platform, you can gain far greater control over the safety, comfort, and efficiency of your job site. Attune can help you find more ways to save energy by providing insightful data analytics regarding water leak detection, maintenance prediction, and customizable climate control thresholds.
In addition, Attune can help to mitigate risks and potential liabilities with the help of our real-time weather station. It provides up-to-the-minute data regarding severe weather, rain forecasts, lightning strikes, or other factors that can negatively impact construction timelines.
Become Attuned and Reduce Your Energy Consumption Today
Energy consumption doesn’t need to be something out of your control. With Attune, all the power-saving data you need is right at your fingertips. Our customizable IoT platform provides real-time monitoring of indoor air quality, water usage, and electricity consumption so you can make more informed decisions, regardless of your industry. Whenever an anomaly is detected, Attune will alert you right away so you can quickly address the root cause of the problem.
When you’re ready to explore how Attune IoT can optimize the efficiency of your office space, school, or construction site, schedule a demo with us to learn more.
