The Prime Minister’s Office joined the 100 Hours of Carbon Clean Up campaign as part of ongoing efforts to reduce its environmental impact.

Run by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), the campaign aims to raise awareness of actions organisations can easily take to reduce the carbon emissions of their buildings and significantly reduce the cost of their energy bills.

Small changes can make a big difference and some of the steps which Number 10 took as part of the campaign could be adopted in offices and homes around the country.

These included:

• Walk around checks to observe how the building is being used
• Tracking energy use, to identify where the most impact can be made
• Adopting simple energy saving measures, such as labeling switches to clarify what they control and encouraging the switching off of lights and office equipment
• Raising awareness, to encourage ideas from employees and establish volunteers to act as low carbon champions
• Highlighting and reporting on the savings made, to encourage others to take action such as switching off PCs at night
• Planning for longer term investments in new technology.
• Other new recent measures include the piloting of intelligent lighting and the installation of voltage optimisation equipment.  The old heating system is being replaced with more energy efficient equipment and a more effective control system is being installed.

Writing for Blog Action Day last week, Gordon Brown said that we all have to take responsibility for cutting emissions from our homes, our cars and our places of work.

“Sarah and I are trying to do our bit. In Downing Street, we are composting, recycling, using energy-saving light bulbs and buying locally-sourced and sustainable food whenever possible.  It’s little things like this which will make a big difference if we all do them.”

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