OFFICE ENERGY FOOTPRINT
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One of TRC’s main contributions to GHG emissions is through direct energy
usage in our offices. Using a team from our Energy Efficiency practice, TRC
conducted an office energy footprint for FY14, which included 112 offices across
the country with over 3,000 employees. Primary energy usage comes from
purchased electricity used for lighting, heating, and cooling our offices, and the
on-site combustion of fuel for heating.
One challenge we experienced while obtaining energy utility data was the
availability of data for some of our office locations. Due to some office lease
agreements we do not directly pay for utilities. Therefore, our total annual office
energy consumption is calculated using a hybrid method which combines actual
energy usage and estimates based on office square footage and a national
office consumption metric. Where provided, we used actual utility data from our
offices; for the remaining offices, we used a national office energy consumption
metric from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Commercial Building
Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) 1. The CBECS standard metric is a Source
Energy Use Intensity figure that considers all forms of primary energy use.
This is a common method used when actual utility or energy use information
is unavailable; however, offices may actually be performing better than this
standard metric.
Based on this analysis method, TRC’s total energy consumption for FY14 is
149,246,946 kBtu/year.
FY14 Target Achieved: Establish baseline for energy consumption within our office
footprint in FY14.
FY15 Target: Reduce energy consumption by 20% by 2020, normalized to FTE’s and office
square footage.
The CBECS data uses building characteristics and energy use from a national sample across all climate
zones in the United States.
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52 | 2014 Sustainability Report