BT Agile Worker Energy & Carbon Study

Key Facts

• This R&D project has focused on clarifying the benefits and trade-offs of home-working versus office-working, including home energy monitoring of 30 employees' households.
• The agile working study included development of a methodology to quantify carbon trade-offs of agile working, coupled with an energy monitoring kit deployed into 30 employee homes. The latter included various self-installed (retrofit) wireless components including an aggregate electricity usage monitor (at the meter), smart-plugs (for appliance-level consumption monitoring), room occupancy & temperature sensors. A smart heating controller will also be available in the near future.
• The project took 12 months to implement
• For the overall solution, the likely ROI is observed to have a net carbon benefit that can be realised within a one year timeframe.
• The actual (or likely) cost of the project is £150k
• The actual (or projected) savings from the project are approximately £6000 per year for every full-time homeworker at BT. In 2009, BT has 10,168 homeworkers, representing a saving of approximately £60m p.a. This is largely based on reduced estate costs, and so is not an ongoing annual saving.
• The primary sponsor for the project was Chief Sustainability Officer / Head of Sustainability Practice

What was the impact?

• Did you use a specific methodology or third party to calculate CO2e or KWh savings?

  The methodology used was developed within the R&D project and will be published in the BT Technology Journal in early 2010. A higher-level summary of the methodology was also included in a deliverable of the ITU Focus Group on ICT & Climate Change.
• 40,000,000KWh of energy have been saved on this project
• This saving will be made over 12 months

• Comments on energy savings

  The annual energy savings (gas and electric) per employee per year, due to reduction in office energy usage, are 4000 kWh. For 10,168 homeworkers this represents 40m kWh (i.e. 40 Gwh) p.a. The home energy monitoring kit also provides energy/carbon awareness and simple energy management support which would be expected to reduce household energy consumption by an additional amount (approximately 10-20%). For a typical household (Ofgem figures) a 10% reduction would yield a further 2,400 kWh energy saving p.a. This corresponds to 24 GWh total across all homeworkers p.a. that could be realised in addition.
• 14,000 t CO₂e has been saved on this project , over a period of 12 months

• Notes about Carbon savings/calculations

  The net annual saving per home-based employee is 1.4 t CO2e, as a result of reduced commute travel emissions (primarily) and reduced office energy use, accounting for some increase in home energy use. That equates to approximately 14% reduction of emissions from a homeworker (assuming Total UK emissions per person are approx 10 tonnes per year). On the face of it, this seemed a high reduction, but we've found that early adopters of homeworking tend to be the ones that live further away i.e. the (obviated) commute distance distribution of homeworkers is skewed towards greater distances versus the commute distance distribution across the whole workforce. This means that the savings are higher than you might expect, but also means that the savings per employee would provide gradually diminishing savings as we rolled out homeworking to larger fractions of the employee base.
• 27,500,000 litres of Unleaded Gasoline has been saved on this project, over a period of 12 months

• Comments on fuel savings

  The DEFRA emissions factors for cars and trains are used.

• Comments on Carbon or Energy savings

  Rebound effects (e.g. extra trips made by homeworkers to the supermarket) have not been quantified in the model. Note that BT annually reports scope 3 emissions that correspond to a financial contribution that it makes to its homeworkers' home energy bills, but does not report on commuting aspects. However the analysis summarised here looks at the carbon trade-offs and benefits from an overall UK perspective.
• The project has independent verification for results

Making it Happen

• The following regulations or incentives allowed the business case to be more attractive

  no

• Barriers experienced during the initiation of the project

• Comments regarding barriers

  Home energy monitoring and management solutions are still rather embryonic in their capabilities.

• Other comments regarding barriers preventing the successful completion of the project

  Detailed monitoring of energy (esp. gas consumption) proved difficult and the kit to support this feature was not available in a timely fashion.