Guide to energy use

12 May 2023

Guide to energy use

ID: Guide to energy use graphic. A lightning logo on a green jagged circle, with the text 'Energy use' underneath. The background is green dots.

This guide aims to help you to understand how much energy your organisation is using and guide you through actions you could take.

Energy is one of the most important but challenging areas for the arts and culture sector and beyond to tackle when it comes to climate change. The energy crisis has proven the exploitative power and reliance on the fossil fuel industry, with increasing financial constraints on the sector. Through collective action, investment, leadership and sharing of knowledge we can start to build the energy and climate secure future we need.

Understanding and recording your energy use is the first step to reducing the energy use in your buildings. Knowing how to read your meters and understanding your bills will help you to see how your activities affect your energy use.

This guide will explore:

  • Understanding energy use and controlling costs and emissions.
  • Guidance for organisations operating from their own buildings or paying fuel bills.
  • Guidance for organisations based in rented offices or studios.
  • Calculating your emissions.
  • Reducing your energy use.

Understanding your energy use
Understanding how your activities affect the way you use your energy allows you to make changes to the way you run your venues, your offices or even your productions. We are all reliant on fuels in the form of electricity, gas, oil, LPG or solid fuels like wood or coal for heating, lighting and powering equipment.

There needs to be a concentrated effort in energy efficiency, reducing our fossil-fuel generated energy production and transitioning to clean energy sources. Thinking about reducing energy use at an early stage when designing your exhibitions or productions will help you to find opportunities to reduce energy use and costs. For example, investing in the use of LED lighting can result in fuel cost savings which more than cover the purchase price of new equipment and reduce emissions as well.
You can share the energy saving experience of some of our Green Arts initiative members here.

It is important to note that as advised by Good Energy, with the ongoing energy crisis it is likely best for organisations to stay with their current energy supplier rather than switch.

While all fuels provide energy, measured in kWh, the level of CO2 emissions produced per kWh, referred to as the carbon intensity, varies between fuels. Similarly, the cost per kWh varies significantly. Using the most appropriate fuel and less energy, in any form, will reduce costs and emissions.

Some cost and emissions comparisons:

Fuel Volume conversion Typical cost (pence/kWh) Typical emissions (per kWh)
Electricity (standard rate) n/a 33.2 0.21 per kWh
Natural gas 11.22kWh/m3 10.3 0.18 per kWh
LPG 6.6kWh/ltr 12.1 0.21 per kWh or 1.56 per litre
Fuel oil 10 kWh/ltr 9.2 0.27 per kWh or 3.18 per litre
Biomass 4,000 kWh/tonne 7.9 0.02 per kWh

 

While there are no restrictions in the UK on how much fuel we use, there are regulations affecting large energy users where they are required to measure and report energy use and emissions. Conditions associated with funding are increasingly requiring emissions to be collected. In line with their Climate Emergency and Sustainability Plan, Creative Scotland requires any organisation that receives regular funding to report on their emissions and develop a climate management plan as part of their annual reporting, which this will include energy used in your buildings.

Establishing a system to record energy use will take some effort at first, but once in place should take very little time to maintain. It’s worth creating a simple set of instructions on how to use your system so that other members of staff can find meters, bills and any spreadsheets or other recording systems you use. How you monitor your building energy use will depend on whether you pay your fuel bills directly or pay indirectly via your landlord if you are in a rented studio or office.

Guidance for organisations operating from their own building or paying fuel bills

  • Find your meters
    These are often located in building basements or outside the building. All buildings (with a very few exceptions) will have an electricity meter. Depending on how the building is heated there may also be a gas meter. For buildings in rural locations, heating is more likely to be provided by electric heaters or boilers which use oil or LPG, which will be stored in a nearby external tank which will usually have a simple fuel gauge attached. Buildings/facilities managers should be able to show you where the building meters and/or supply tanks are located. This may take some time and effort if you are using a building on a temporary basis. Try to do it during a planning visit before you arrive at the venue and ask your key point of contact at the venue to help.
  • Read your meters
    Having found your meters, designate 5-10 minutes at the start of your week to do your readings. This way it will become part of your routine and allow for greater consistency between readings.
  • Check Oil/LPG deliveries
    Assessing how much liquid fuels you are using from week to week is more difficult. Gauges on fuel tanks are unlikely to provide accurate enough readings to allow you to assess usage. The best way to do this is to organise deliveries so that the storage tank is always filled at each delivery. The amount supplied will show how much fuel you have used since the last delivery and allow you to calculate your average weekly use over the period between deliveries.
  • Record and convert your data
    This can be done using a simple spreadsheet and, if possible, usage should be recorded as kWh for all fuels.

Gas usage in m3,or oil and LPG in litres, can be converted to kWh using the volume conversion factors shown in the table above. Buildings/facilities managers may already be taking weekly meter readings or fuel delivery information, in which case you can work with the data they are recording. This weekly data will give you a detailed picture of your building performance and the areas in which improvements to your energy and water consumption can be made.

Guidance for organisations operating from their own building or paying fuel bills

  • Ask your landlord to provide utilities data
    As a tenant you may be sharing a larger building with several other occupants and your landlord will pay for utilities for the whole building. Accessing weekly usage is unlikely to be practical and will be less relevant to individual office or studio users, so you may only be able to track your usage on a monthly or annual basis. If you can gain access to your landlord’s energy usage via bills, you can estimate your own usage depending on the proportion of the building you occupy. Getting this data on a monthly basis and recording it in a spreadsheet will give you a good sense of your energy use.
  • Estimate your energy use
    If you cannot gain access to this data you can use our Tenant Energy Toolbox to make an estimate of your annual energy use.

Focusing on your usage will show how you might be able to co-operate with your landlord and fellow tenants to make reductions in the overall energy use for the building.

Calculating and communicating your emissions
It is useful to understand how your building energy use fits in to your carbon footprint and to communicate this to your colleagues and even your audiences. There are a number of tools and web resources you can use to calculate and take action on your emissions. For example:

  • Our carbon management toolswe have four tools on our website, the carbon management planning tool, the quick carbon management calculator, CMP summary tool and the carbon budget calculator.
  • Sign up for an account on Julie’s Bicycle Creative Climate Tools. The Creative Climate Tools are a free set of unique carbon calculators developed by Julie’s Bicycle specifically for the creative industries.
  • Emissions can, alternatively, be calculated by multiplying usage in kWh by the appropriate emissions factor for the fuel used. You can find accurate and up to date emissions factors here.

Once you have established a system for recording your energy use and calculating the resultant emissions, the next step is to look for opportunities to reduce the amount you use by finding where energy is wasted. Involve your staff members to come up with ideas and use our case studies to see how others have done it.

You can start with simple measures eg make sure lights and equipment are switched off when not in use. Check that the heating timers and thermostats in the building are set correctly to avoid heating being on unnecessarily.

Typically, your energy use will vary from year to year depending on your artistic programme, so do not be discouraged if you don’t immediately see savings. Remember that the methods you undertake should be actioned through a climate justice lens. For example, some visitors or audiences may have temperature or lighting requirements due to visual or mobility disabilities.

You can visit Disability Information Scotland for more detail on this and read our guide to climate justice. For more ideas on improving efficiency or making cost conscious energy saving improvements to your building, check out websites like Business Energy Scotland and Good Energy.

About Creative Carbon Scotland

We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

[email protected]

+44 (0)131 243 2760

Supported by

Creative Scotland logo City of Edinburgh Council logo

A project initiated by Edinburgh’s Festivals with key partners the Federation of Scottish Theatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network

Edinburgh Festival City logo Federation of Scottish Theatre logo Scottish Contemporary Art Network logo

Accreditations

Scottish Living Wage Accreditation