veitu
commented
2 years ago Skillet & Ventress (2020)
Electricity consumption of office equipment at home
- Typical energy consumption of desktop and associated IT equipment (i.e. laptop or PC, monitor, phone and printer) per work location (according to CIBSE guide F): 140 to 150 W (Menezes et al., 2013)
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Calculation methodology of Skillet & Ventress (2020) "Base Case": [A] 140W # Homeworking FTE WHpa / 1000 = Workstation kWh [B] 10W # Homeworking FTE WHpa / 1000 = Lighting kWh [A] + [B] = Total Office Electricity
FTE: Full-time Equivalent. This represents the hours worked by one full-time employee. WHpa: Working Hours per year.
Electricity consumption of lighting at home
- if unknown, one can assume 10 Watts for lighting throughout the year (Skillet & Ventress, 2020)
Heating emissions at home
- Assumptions of Skillet & Ventress (2020) for their base case: Heating season lasts 6 months (182 days) The average household heats 10 hours per day Typical domestic gas usage is 12,000 kWh per year 77% of annual gas usage in a home is attributed to heating 160 working hours per month 1/3 of employees has household members who regularly stay home during the day --> so only 2/3 of the employees working from home lead to increased heating consumption at home
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Calculation methodology of Skillet & Ventress (2020) "Base Case": 182 days 10 hours heating = 1,820 hours (12,000kWh 77%) / 1,820 hours = ca. 5 kWh per hour
160WHpcm 5kWh = 800kWh Incremental heating consumption per Homeworking FTE per heating month 800kWh (Homeworking FTE * 66.7%) = Total Incremental gas consumption per heating month (UK)
Monks et al. (2021)
- Assess hours worked from home (Number of hours worked per day Number of days worked per week Number of weeks worked at home = Remote working hours per employee)
- Assess energy consumption from devices (desktop computer: 100 W, laptop: 60 W, monitor: 20 W)
- Apply additional 0.0214 kWh per hour of videoconferencing
- Lighting: Assumption that 7000 lumen are required to light a home office (very high value from my personal feeling)
- This equates to the following energy consumptions per hour of different lighting types to light a home office:
- Traditional light bulbs (Tungsten): 516 W, Halogen: 370 W, LED: 86 W
- Assess heating consumption:
- Energy consumption from heating (kWh) = kW of specific heating system number of hours heating is on number of days worked per week 4 (number of weeks in a month) number of months that the heating is on)
- Heating consumption is calculated for a 4-room house. Users can state that they heat "more than one room" (heating consumption is divided by 2) or that they heat "just one room" (heating consumption is divided by 4)
Sources
- Menezes, Anna Carolina, et al. "Benchmarking small power energy consumption in office buildings in the United Kingdom: A review of data published in CIBSE Guide F." Building Services Engineering Research and Technology 34.1 (2013): 73-86. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143624412465092
- Skillet, Luke & Ventress, Lindsay. "Homeworking emissions Whitepaper" (2020). https://info.eco-act.com/en/homeworking-emissions-whitepaper-2020 (accessed 26.08.2022)
- Homeworking Emissions Whitepaper 2020.pdf
- Monks, Ellie, et al. "New Methodology for Measuring Remote Working Carbon Emissions" (2021). https://www.compareyourfootprint.com/measure-remote-working-carbon-emissions/ (accessed 26.08.2022) Measuring-Remote-Working-Carbon-Emissions-Research-Nov-2021.pdf
Since 2020, many people are working in home office. Therefore, some electricity consumption will not be accounted for if only using the institution's building electricity consumption.
We should have an option to also count emissions in home office.
This may be calculated by the device(s) used in home office and the duration of daily/weekly usage. Lighting is also important and heating (you usually don't heat your home while you are at work).
The heating emissions in home office could be estimated in the following way: monthly heating consumption / number of people in the household * share of the month spent working at home