BBP LAUNCHES BENCHMARKING GUIDANCE

26/01/2010

Benchmarking is a starting point for all businesses that want to reduce their carbon footprint but is a step often missed within the industry. All too often organisations embark on carbon saving programmes without fully understanding how their buildings operate and where savings can most effectively be made.

The BBP urges all businesses in London to start measuring and monitoring the sustainability performance of their operations – no matter how basic a starting point is taken, it is better to start at a simple level and add increasing detail over time – what the BBP terms a ‘Graduated Approach’.

 
Benchmarking has numerous benefits in terms of allowing organisations to assess performance trends of buildings or portfolios over time, set targets and meet growing legislative and regulatory requirements, but most importantly it can identify where carbon saving action is most appropriate and where the greatest savings can be made.
 
Many commercial buildings have multiple tenants who all use energy but have no idea of how much they use. Measuring energy use - hour by hour, floor by floor - allows owners and occupiers to understand where energy is being wasted and how they can work together to reduce energy consumption.
 
Justin Snoxall of British Land said “Through engagement with occupiers at York House, it became very apparent, without accurate energy data, that it would be very difficult to understand the impact of new initiatives introduced. Prior to September 2009 we took manual quarterly meter readings for each occupier and for the common parts. This gave us a picture of consumption against prior periods. In September 2009, we installed an energy management system, with 15 minute automatic reporting. As a result of this, we now have a much clearer picture of the impact from each new initiative. This has provided much better visibility and justification for each of the initiatives we consider.”
 
Significant savings, both financial and in terms of CO2, can be made simply by benchmarking a property’s performance, understanding how a building operates on a day to day basis and taking basic action.
 
GE Capital Real Estate recently installed Automated Meter Reading (AMR) technology at their London HQ allowing them to monitor energy and water consumption on a half hourly basis. Through this they established that by primarily making adjustments to the building management system and the installation of a waterless urinal system they were able to reduce electricity consumption by 17%, gas by 42% and water by a staggering 74%. This resulted in savings of around £60,000 a year paying back the cost of actions and system installation within a month.
 
David Short of GE said “This experience really brought home the old saying that if you want to manage something you need to measure it. Simply by using technology to get visibility on our half hourly utilities consumption and some expert advice on ways to reduce it we achieved significant savings in term of cost and carbon with very little expense and no disruption to our operations. We are now rolling the system out widely on our real estate portfolio to try to achieve the same for our tenants."
 
There are key challenges to benchmarking such as the metrics and indicators used and how data is represented but the major issue is the lack of clear definitions in what to measure. The BBP has called for the industry organisations such as British Property Federation, British Council for Offices, British Council of Shopping Centres, Investment Property Forum, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the UK Green Building Council to come together and agree a set of industry standard definitions which businesses can use to measure. This work is being taken forward by the Green Property Alliance.
 
Tatiana Bosteels, Chair of the Sustainable Benchmarking Working Group, said “It is vital that the tools emerging which help businesses measure their sustainability performance follow a consistent methodology to ensure comparisons can be made across the sector. The variety of ways buildings are used make comparisons difficult anyway and without everyone measuring in the same way we have no chance of reaching a common sector-wide understanding of building performance”