New energy reporting format Available to Purchase

How much energy does your office use? The London Energy Group (LEG) has produced a new proforma for collecting energy use information from building users in a standardised way. Six years ago, ahead of its time, LEG devised a form for this purpose. Energy auditing was then being practised by many companies. If this form had been used extensively there would by now be a database of comparable information from which targets and other guidance could be developed, but the Department of Energy did not take positive steps to encourage its use and, on first sight, many building managers found it too complicated. The new format that has been developed sets out to simplify the procedure, cutting out, for example, references to primary energy. However, although the amount of information requested has been reduced, and the task of entering it is less exacting, LEG itself has commented that in some respects this is a backward step. Work being done by the International Energy Agency on collecting energy data and a draft European Community Directive on Energy Labelling suggests that the extra information included in the old format is indeed useful and worth including on a standardised form.