So what can ports do to save energy and stop throwing money away? The UK Government has already stated that it wants to get energy suppliers to extend to all other than small businesses advanced and smart metering services within the next five years. Already mandatory for large energy users, these systems provide readings on either an automatic half-hourly basis for electricity or on a daily basis for gas and are deemed imperative to making sound investment decisions on energy efficiency, which the UK Government believes can help towards achieving annual savings of 0.1-0.2mt of carbon per year by 2020.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A two-year field trial of metering systems installed in small- to medium-sized companies carried out by the Carbon Trust found cost savings of over 5% per year can be made with a payback on the investment in less than one year.<\/p>\n
As mentioned, state-of-the-art energy efficient products such as high-flux LED lighting and geothermal- or solar thermal-based heating\/cooling systems can shave thousands off the cost of running buildings and other office structures within the port complex.<\/p>\n
Without sounding like one of those techno-geeks that blog the aforementioned dot.com, new lighting technology can provide improved lighting quality while reducing electricity use by up to 30%. The most common type of lighting used is something called High Intensity Discharge Lighting, although LED lighting, still in its infancy, too can make savings as these light emitting diodes produce little waste heat. However, UK-based company Prismalence has introduced a novel lighting solution that its claims can reduce energy by up to 85% when compared against conventional 400W High Pressure Sodium or 400W Metal Halide based bulbs. For port crane, warehouse and cold storage lighting applications a single 150W Prismalence Ceramic Discharge Metal Halide bulb can deliver the same illumination as a 2000W Halogen lamp or a 400W Mercury lamp while lasting up to 16,000 hours use, or five-and-a-half years based on eight hours per day.<\/p>\n
New optic technology can distribute a very even light over a wider area than older lighting technologies which means less lighting units are required or exterior units can be mounted lower down. As well as energy, light pollution is reduced as the design focuses more of the light only where it is required.<\/p>\n
Where ports have a high transport throughput, fuel bills can be slashed by embracing the so-called Ecodriven Project which provides training on the optimum way in which to drive and operate vehicles to reduce fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and accident rates. Such driving techniques are claimed to lead to average fuel savings of between 5 and 10%.<\/p>\n
Water use and wastewater treatment also generates a considerable carbon footprint. Some 559kWh of energy is used to supply each mega-litre of water, while 756kWh of energy is used to treat every a mega-litre of waste water. Ports can work out how much carbon its water supply and treatment generates by simply using the following equations. For supply: one mega-litre of water x 559 = kWh of energy used x (a rolling average conversion factor of) 0.53702)\/1000 = tonnes CO2<\/sub> emitted. If you have water figures supplied in m3<\/sup> then you will need to divide by a 1000 a second time in order to get an accurate emissions figure, so 320,000m3<\/sup> of water x 559\/1000 = 178,880kWh x 0.53702\/1000 = 96.1t of CO2<\/sub>. For waste water, it is: mega-litre x 756 = kWh of energy used x 0.53702\/1000 = tonnes CO2<\/sub> emitted.<\/p>\n Besides the amount of carbon emitted in its treatment and supply, water, lest we forget, is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity and Envirowise, a government-funded programme that imparts free advice to UK businesses, has introduced a scheme to help businesses save up to 30% on their water and effluent bills. The scheme, called The Rippleeffect, launched last month, aims to help companies meet the government target of reducing water use by 20% by 2020 by identifying ways business is using and wasting water. Simple measures such as ensuring taps and pipes do not leak, installing water efficient sanitary systems and rainwater harvesting are all necessary measures, especially since the cost of water is set to rise by 22% by 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While once-upon-a-time any commitment to reducing energy consumptionwas viewed as purely a way to portray a companys green credentials,with the high cost of fuel these days it is now more a commercialnecessity and never before has the adoption of new energy-efficienttechnologies made good business sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terminal-operations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6737"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}