ABSTRACT
This chapter covers what many people call 'energy efficiency' or 'energy conservation'. When energy is left as an indeterminate part of general corporate overheads, it feels like 'someone else's problem', and the opportunity to avoid wastage is lost. The first and most obvious way of doing this is ensuring that energy consuming appliances that don't need to be on are turned off. Lighting, heating and air conditioning are perhaps the most obvious. Many companies appoint an energy representative or monitor in each area of the business to oversee this and help colleagues adopt best practice. Energy efficiency ratings have been applied to white goods since the early 1990s; we are all familiar with the A+++ to G rating in rainbow colours. An LED flat screen uses about 40% less energy than a conventional LCD model, itself perhaps 50% less 'hungry' than a plasma screen.
