Energy

You will need to set out a plan for energy management. This should specify clear timeframes for activities to meet the goals you have defined. The plan should include:

• development and implementation of policy changes
• implementation of in-house actions, such as switch-off campaigns
• site investigations, such as energy audits
• implementation of measures, both technical and non-technical
• review of performance.

A template for the activities plan is provided in the detailed notes.

The activities plan

By following the previous sections, you will have established the basic ground rules within which your energy management action plan will operate. It is now necessary to work out a plan of attack for achieving results.

There are five basic areas of activity that need to be considered:

• Policy Changes: These can include direct energy-related issues such as modifications to purchasing and leasing policy, or wider policy issues such as changing the manner in which energy is accounted for.
• In-House Actions: These are in-house activities that relate primarily to behavioural change at staff level, relating to lighting and equipment.
• Site Investigations: These are the more detailed technical investigations that will generally require the appointing of external consultants.
• Implementation: This includes all activities necessary to achieve implementation.
• Review: This includes schedule times for the review of project progress and the success in achieving the planned goals.

These stages remain essentially unchanged irrespective of whether you are implementing work totally in-house via external consultants, or via an energy performance contract. It is worth noting, however, that some of the details within each stage will be different. The requirements of each of these areas of activity are discussed below. When drawing up your own plan, you may find it helpful to use the Working Energy Activities Plan Template provided by the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO, Commonwealth).

Policy changes

The primary areas that need to be addressed under policy changes are as follows:

• Selection of Energy Efficient Equipment: Whitegoods should have a minimum performance of 3 stars under the post-2001 appliance rating or four stars under the earlier rating. Equipment such as computers with Energy Star features should be supplied with these features and enabled prior to delivery.
• The Accounting of Energy within the Organisation: The energy manager should assume responsibility for energy costs, to allow coherent investment and actions.
• Consideration of Energy Efficiency in appointing External Contracts: Particular areas of concern here are cleaning and security, both of which can have strong effects on out-of-hours use, depending on their practices and/or cooperation in turning items off after-hours.
• Accommodation Policy: Energy considerations need to be included in purchasing policy. These may include measures such as maximum lighting power density requirements, lighting switching arrangements, and/or minimum building performance under the Australian Building Greenhouse Rating Scheme.

Your action plan should set out the general areas of policy change required, the parties involved in achieving and approving such changes and the timeline by which changes will be discussed, approved and implemented.

In-house actions

The primary in-house action items relate to:

• switching off of lighting and equipment when not required
• limiting the operating hours of air-conditioning to reflect actual building use
• out-of-hours air-conditioning use
• enabling of energy saving features on computers.

These are described in more detail elsewhere. However, in terms of an action plan, the basic items that need to be defined are:

• the organisational units within which each of these items can be dealt with. For instance, the lighting may be dealt with on a building-by-building basis, in which case you will need to define contact personnel for each building who will take responsibility for coordinating the actions in that unit. For computers, on the other hand, one may find that a single IT manager covers several sites.
• the program of implementing measures, including stages for consultation with affected staff and definition of measures to be pursued. This program may need to be defined separately for each organisational unit.

Site investigations

The primary site investigation items are as follows:

• Definition of a Program of Investigations covering the Major Items. If you have multiple sites, always investigate your larger sites first. If you have many small but similar sites, you may want to package investigations across multiple sites to maximise the benefits of implementing similar measures across many sites.
• Appointment of Consultants. This should allow for time to call for proposals, review the proposals and negotiate contracts. If you are seeking an energy performance contract, you should allow around six weeks, as the contractors will need to do a walk-through audit of part or all of your site to be able to submit a proposal.
• Investigation Time. It is desirable to allow a reasonable amount of time for investigations to occur. Bear in mind that the consultant has to sort through large amounts of data, some of which they will be seeking from you. If the investigation needs to be in a very short time, then you will have to be prepared to respond in a correspondingly short time. For small to medium sites, six weeks is normally a good period to allow for this stage, from appointment to completion of final report. For larger and more complex sites, you should allow eight to twelve weeks. If the investigations are required to be particularly detailed, you will need to allow longer than these times.
• Consolidation Time. It is often forgotten that there is an additional process to complete after the investigations have been finished, that is reviewing the proposed energy efficiency measures and making decisions as to which measures should proceed. This process can often take a significant period of time, particularly if it is poorly planned. You should identify a group of people to conduct the review process, and establish clear timeframes and communications points within which the process will occur. A maximum of eight weeks should be allowed for this process; four to six weeks is preferable.

The plan of activities should identify the timing of each of the above items, possibly with different timelines for different packages of work. The personnel involved in each stage need to be identified.

Implementing technical measures

Whether you are implementing measures in-house or via an energy performance contract, you will need to allow a substantial period of time for implementation. For minor works, only one to two months may be necessary, but for major works you should allow up to six months. This is because there are a number of stages that need to occur during implementation, and the success of the energy saving measures depends strongly upon the care with which each of these stages are conducted. The key stages are as follows:

• Appointment of Design Consultants/Contractors: If you are implementing measures from an energy audit, you may need to appoint a separate design consultant or contractor to detail the design of measures. If you appoint a design consultant, then you will also need to allow for the appointment of a contractor to install the measures after the detailed plans are prepared.
• Establishment of Target Benchmarks: To be assured of the performance of your measures, you must establish targets for the savings you expect to achieve. This is a simple operation of working out the percentage savings expected for each energy supply and deducting it from the current energy-use benchmark in each period. The result is your target benchmark.
• Preparation of Detailed Plans: Energy audits and energy performance contracts rarely produce detailed plans during the technical investigation stage. This is because the costs of doing so are typically far higher than the fees available at the technical investigation stage. As a result, the first stage of implementation will involve the refinement and design of measures proposed in a relatively general sense at the investigation stage. You should always seek to see and approve these plans before commencement of the next phase.
• Site Works: The execution of works on site will need to be fitted in around the operational needs of your office. For instance, if you are getting a major refurbishment of systems in your office space, you will need to consider the implications of such a refurbishment for the operation of your office. In general you will have to put up with some inconvenience, but with planning you may be able to minimise this. However, in terms of the preparation of your activities plan, you will not know the details of work to be performed, so it is advisable to allow a generous time period for site works.
• Commissioning: Given that many energy management measures arise from poor commissioning, it is obviously important that energy efficiency measures are themselves properly commissioned. You need to allow one to two months for this to occur before the works can be considered complete.

If you are responsible for multiple sites, you will need to ensure that your program allows for the coordination of implementation on each site.

Implementing in-house measures

The implementation of in-house measures requires less formalised work than the implementation of technical measures, but is nonetheless quite labour intensive. Bear in mind that you are likely to be reliant on the skills and cooperation of a number of people who may not have the same dedication to energy efficiency as you. The basic phases you need to allow for in planning the implementation of in-house measures are as follows:

• Formulation of Consultation Groups: These need to be formed in each separate implementation unit (typically one unit per building or site).
• Definition of Measures: Each implementation group will need to define a well targeted list of measures. It is suggested that this is done in coordination with the technical investigation phase, which may produce relevant recommendations.
• Establishing Target Benchmarks: It is crucial for in-house measures to establish target performance benchmarks. These can be established in a similar manner to the description in the previous section. However, because you are probably dealing with behavioural issues, it is important to establish benchmarks that are a little more direct than the monthly energy use. For overnight lighting and equipment operation, for instance, aim for a given level of overnight (off-peak) energy use. The more direct your benchmark, the easier it will be to use it to influence staff behaviour.
• Implementation of Measures: Generally in-house measures require little preparation to execute but much more effort to maintain. You should therefore take the time at the beginning of the program to establish a sustainable workplan for maintaining the measures. Allow one to two months for this to occur. It is best to stage implementation to allow for some learning from one implementation exercise to another.

Review

Energy management is not over once you have implemented a few measures. As a rough rule of thumb, in-house measures last about six months if not maintained, and although some technical measures have a fairly permanent effect, many of the control and commission based measures will decay after a period of one to two years if not properly maintained. Therefore, it is essential to institute a regular review process.

It is recommended that review periods be planned as follows:

• Regular reporting of Performance against Goals and Benchmarks: This should occur once every quarter. This will include the discussion of operational issues and observations about the performance of measures.
• Assessment of Overall Performance: A more detailed review needs to be conducted six months after the completion of the implementation phase. If measures are not performing, additional technical investigation may be required to establish causes and find remedies. Subsequent reviews can occur once yearly, or if savings appear stable, once every two years.
• New Investigations: It is good practice to subject buildings to energy audits at least once every five years. This should be the maximum period between audits. In a five year period, new energy-related maintenance issues will appear, building utilisation patterns will change and technologies will advance. This provides plenty of scope for new work in repeat audits.