Office Lighting as a Performance Metric?
It may seem like a petty issue, but as energy costs increase, the practice of leaving lights (and other equipment) on at night is creating a bad "image" for some companies.
Toledo Edison Building
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Corp. HQ Building, Toledo
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The figures show two office buildings in the same city on the same night in June 2003. At Toledo Edison, practically all of the lights are off (except for exterior decorative lighting). In order to achieve this degree of energy efficiency, it is evident that a policy is in place, and/or a master switch controls the lights in the entire building. Such a practice has a significant impact on operating costs, and it conveys an image of community responsibility -- something we would expect from an electric power utility company like Toledo Edison.
Down the street stands the corporate headquarters of a large commercial company. Here we see that about 80% of the offices' lights are on all night. This practice can convey some negative perceptions:
- we don't have a corporate-wide energy-saving policy, or we have one that isn't enforced;
- we don't pay attention to such "details";
- we aren't concerned about the community impacts in terms of air pollution and CO2 generation caused by the (estimated) 180 kilowatts of extra power being generated;
- we aren't that interested in saving our investors' money (despite the fact that the company lost 12c/share due to increased energy costs in the past quarter).
There are some excuses commonly offered to explain leaving the lights on in a building:
1. "We need them on for the cleaning crews." This is an not credible: do you really have cleaning crews working on all the floors all night?
2. "We need them on for security." This may be appropriate for a home, but it is a lame excuse for a company. There are better ways of handling security than by keeping the lights on. Isn't Toledo Edison is also concerned about security? They demonstrate that lights are not essential to security.
Although leaving the lights on isn't exactly an ethical issue, it does tend to indicate a certain degree of irresponsibility and waste of resources. And it advertises this for all to see. Such an easy-to-observe behavior-based metric may be appropriate to include in performance assessments.