Are all those lights necessary? Do an experiment. Turn some off. You’ll be amazed how much natural light there is, how noisy fluorescent lights are, and how relaxing dimmer lighting can be. Try using desk lamps.
If you have not experienced the thrill of being the first person at work, set the alarm real early one morning and get there at the crack of dawn.
No, really!
You may enjoy the privilege of going around and turning on every light in the building.
But hang on, in lots of offices the lights are left on all night!
Mostly when you ask, “Why?” there are no particular reasons. It is just “in case”, “because we always do” or “no-one asked me to turn them off.”
What to do?
There are plenty of companies that have saved thousands of dollars a year on their energy bills as a result of paying attention to all this. Use them as a template for your campaign to your organisation.
Reality check
Fluorescent lights do take some time to ‘warm up’. Turning them on and off can shorten their life, but so can leaving them on. Taking all these things into account, it is more cost effective to turn off a fluorescent light than to leave it on if it will stay off for more than ten minutes.
Benefits | Costs |
| Hundreds or thousands of dollars for the audit. DownsideYou’ll have to champion this cause on top of your existing workload |
Places to go | Hard FactsThe commercial sector consumes about 22 per cent of Sydney’s electricity. Commercial lighting in Sydney creates 10 million tonnes of CO2 each year |
Search termsdaylight harvesting energy audit office greenhouse five star building energy efficiency consultant | Related tipsAdjust your thermostat Win an award for your workplace Telecommute |
