Envirometer is very useful for De Nederlandsche Bank

Raymond Akkerman works at the facilities department of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB):

The Envirometer is very useful for DNB. Our suspicions that transport accounts  for a considerable share of our environmental burden was confirmed. We've started a study to obtain a more accurate picture of DNB's transport operations.

The Envirometer provides guarantees and monitoring for our environmental care programme, which is certified under ISO 14.001. Our external auditor is also positive in his assessment of the Envirometer.

In the Environmental Annual Report it's now a straightforward matter to show what kind of progress we're making on the environmental front. Our staff can also follow the Envirometer on our intranet.

Envirometer for offices

This page gives an impression of the Envirometer for office premises. For this purpose we present the results of the Envirometer benchmarking of government offices.

Environmental benchmarking of (government) offices

At the request of SenterNovem, in 2008 the Envirometer was used for benchmarking government offices for the fourth time. The offices participating together provided 56 Envirometers with data over 2007. The results are summarised below. Further details, including conclusions on large versus small offices, the influence of heat and cold storage, and differences from the previous year, are available in the full report (in Dutch).

Key data on respondents

The buildings covered are government office complexes (38 municipal, 7 provincial, 6 national, 3 environmental departments and 2 ministries). Besides offices, many of them have reception areas, wedding rooms, council chambers and other meeting rooms. Most buildings also have a canteen. The buildings are of varying age; some are very new, some were built in the 1970s and a few are listed monuments going back centuries.

Envirometer

The chart on the right shows the average Envirometer of the participating government offices for 2007. For the average office, the relative contributions of the various environmental themes were as follows:

• 5% office paper (red)
• 41% business travel (dark green)
• 30% commuting (light green)
• <1% hazardous waste (light blue)
• 9% commercial waste (blue)
• 1% water and wastewater
  
• 13% heating (yellow)
• <1%% electricity (orange)

Power consumption contributes relatively little to overall environmental impact, because a growing number of government agencies are now using green electricity. The chart below shows the results if all the participants had still been using 'grey' electricity:

• 4% office paper (red)
• 28% business travel (dark green)
• 20% commuting (light green)
• 0% hazardous waste
• 6% commercial waste (blue)
• 1% water and wastewater
• 9% heating (yellow)
• 31% electricity (orange)

Key conclusions

• More and more organisations are getting a handle on their transport and travel data. With this larger data set available, it emerges that these two themes feature even more prominently in overall environmental impact than had transpired in the previous benchmarking exercise. Respondents have the impression that the number of business trips (including air travel) is rising because of growing internationalisation.
• Office gas consumption is declining, owing both to upgrading of existing building stock and equipment and to new build.
• The average environmental impact of power consumption is strongly influenced by the use of green electricity by some of the respondent agencies. 
• For each government office employee, an average of 2.5 tonnes of CO₂ was emitted in 2007. This compares with 8.5 tonnes annual CO₂ emissions for the average Dutch household; 3.4 government office workers therefore emit juist as much CO₂ as the average household. Over half these emissions are due to commuting and business travel, with most of the remainder deriving from office energy use.

Indicator scores

The following table shows the indicator scores to emerge from the benchmarking of government offices. We report both the average and the best values. All the scores are on an annual basis.

*) = m³ gas-equivalent / m³ or m³ gas-equivalent / FTE