To help you prepare, the Carbon Trust has come up with five easy steps your company can take now to cut winter heating and lighting costs. We estimate that if all Carbon News readers initiated these simple steps within their business, the collective savings this winter could be a massive £150m in fuel costs.

At the same time this will help combat climate change by cutting CO2 emissions by 1.2 million tonnes*:

1. Use light-saving measures - switch off lights when not required, or install timing and/or presence detectors to automatically control lighting.
2. Reset your company's thermostats - even a 1°C temperature reduction can reduce bills by up to 8%.
3. Fit an optimiser to your boiler - a time switch that automatically turns on the boiler to most efficiently pre-heat your occupied workspace.
4. Switch off extractor fans overnight to avoid removing warm air - this can save up to 5% of your boiler's gas consumption.
5. Install an air-to-air heat recovery device in your air ventilation system - it cuts costs by recovering heat from stale exhaust air and transferring it onto incoming fresh air.

If you want to encourage your company to start preparing now for winter, download and put up the following poster (pdf, 605 KB).

If you'd like more advice, contact our Customer Centre on
0800 085 2005, or email us at customercentre@carbontrust.co.uk

Dr Garry Felgate,
Director,
Delivery and External Relations