The NEMEX theatre part of sustainabilitylive! at Birmingham’s NEC heard a panel discussion on energy efficiency – is it people or technology?

Interestingly, Simon Hill of consultants Hyder Environment said his experience showed people would turn up the heat once they’d installed energy efficient improvements.

He said: “They think that now they’re saving money so they might as well turn up the power, which isn’t really the point.”

Mr Hill, who was standing in for a colleague trapped in Europe due to the air chaos caused by Icelandic Volcanic ash, also explained how business needs to keep staff informed.

He added: “I used to work with a large confectioner and got a call from a colleague on Christmas day who asked me if I’d seen our power usage.

“It was not the first thing on my mind, but I turned on my computer and saw that on Christmas day with just a security guard watching the Queen’s speech our power usage was like a normal day.

“A couple of days later we looked into and found out a air handling system was left running over the Christmas period.

“This was all because no one had told the shift manager it needed to be switched off at the end of the day.”

Luke Walsh

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