CARBON CHAMPIONS – TOP TIPS

Top tips for everyday champions?  

To make the most of carbon champions, there are often two parts to my answer:

Firstly, to identify the best champions and, secondly, to recognise the secrets to their success. 

I have given tips on the former but asked two successful champions – Alun Ottley and Ivan Brooking – both of whom I have worked closely with, to comment on the latter.  Both have proven track records – delivering 30–90% savings in specific targeted areas of energy use.    

Identifying great champions:  James Brittain (The Discovery Mill)

  1. Opinion leaders – Successful champions are typically people who get on well with their colleagues, are trusted and can lead by example. They are not necessarily senior managers – this is more about attitude and communication.  They are often able to connect and work with people at all levels of an organisation. Hadyn Young of Gaia Active calls them ‘key connectors’.
  2. Always Win Win – The focus is on delivering best value out of what they’ve got; pitching just the eco-reasons for doing it often doesn’t deliver results.  It’s got to be about delivering the bigger picture of improved service, optimised cost, better reputation and thinking about ‘what’s in it’ for colleagues as well as working towards a greener world.
  3. Able to challenge – Asking those challenging ‘why why’ questions helps distil processes down to their simplest most efficient form. True, it does help if you are technically minded if you need to get into the detail, but non-technical champions can contribute just as much and sometimes do better (as they have the advantage of not being clouded by the techy detail!).

Finding the best opportunities:  Alun Ottley (BAA and ARO Consultants)

  1. Keep it simple – If it’s not straightforward to see where the benefit is, it’s probably not there.  An energy benefit must be obvious and easily quantifiable so that it can be easily understood and, when put into practice, won’t cause other unseen costs.
  2. 80/20 – Invest your time and budget in the top items that will give you the maximum return.  It is normally true that 80-90% of the energy is consumed by 10-20% of the asset base.  So targeting improvements on that 10-20% is the quickest way to reduce your energy bill or carbon footprint.
  3. Look at whole systems and understand interdependencies – The idea that energy projects are done at the expense of something else – like lighting level or ability to condition an environment – is a myth. Usually a building problem with the air quality, light level or ambience offers opportunity for energy saving as well – you just need to be able to see the bigger picture.  For example, if you are struggling to heat cold, outside air (within a mechanically ventilated system), it may be that you aren’t recirculating enough inside air, as intended, and you need to make sure the dampers and air quality sensors are working effectively.

Delivering change:  Ivan Brooking (Babcock International)

  1. Just ‘do it’ – It’s always easy to put something off until tomorrow, particularly if you are concerned it might not work.  You need to just ‘give it a go’ and have the tenacity to keep going.
  2. Continuous improvement – Be prepared to ‘fail forward’, learn from results and continuously adjust your approach as required.
  3. Demonstrate results – To roll out a project and sustain the change, you need to be able to measure and demonstrate results to others, ideally in graphical form, and then set good controls (based on energy consumption per unit of output). These are key parts of the Lean Six Sigma methodology that we use.

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