Toolkit to help London firms measure floor-by-floor energy use

The London Development Agency (LDA) has teamed up with a group of the capital's largest property owners to today release a set of guidelines designed to help businesses and landlords measure and reduce the energy use from commercial buildings.

Efforts to cut energy from offices and commercial properties are often hampered by the fact energy use data is frequently only provided for an entire building, making it difficult for individual firms to assess precisely how much power they are using.

The new toolkit, which has been put together by the Better Buildings Partnership of leading property owners, including British Land, Canary Wharf Group and GE Capital Real Estate, attempts to tackle this problem by setting out best practice guidelines on how to install hour-by-hour, floor-by-floor energy meters that make it easy for businesses to reduce their energy use.

Noting that commercial buildings account for more than a third of London's carbon pollution, London mayor Boris Johnson urged businesses to use the toolkit, arguing that it would help them cut carbon emissions and save money.

David Short at GE Capital Real Estate underlined the cost savings that can be realised through accurate energy monitoring, explaining that the company had helped cut electricity use by 17 per cent and water use by 74 per cent a year after installing half-hourly energy and water meters at its London HQ.

"This experience really brought home the old saying that if you want to manage something, you need to measure it," he said, adding that the company had saved an estimated £60,000 a year as a result of the project. "Simply by using technology to get visibility on our half-hourly utilities consumption, and getting 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."

He added that the company is now rolling out the same meters across its real estate portfolio.

The LDA said that the guidelines, which bring together best practices pioneered by the members of the Better Buildings Partnership, are also intended to help establish agreed benchmarks for measuring the energy use of buildings across the capital.