With the Christmas holidays fast approaching, there is no better time for taking a moment to consider a plan for your office and IT over the Christmas break.

Whilst servers and essential IT and telecoms infrastructure equipment should probably be excluded from a power down, there are plenty of other items which are often overlooked, and which are left switched on in the race out of the door.

The heating thermostat is of course the obvious starter in the list. According to The Carbon Trust, reducing heating temperatures by just 1ºC can cut fuel consumption by 8%, although care should be taken not to set it so low as to allow frost to damage your premises or equipment. Lights are also often overlooked, so too are kettles, watercoolers and other none essential office equipment.

In terms of IT specifically, there are many items which are often left needlessly switched on. For example, leaving a laptop on charge for 24 hours costs on average £1.68 a day. So, for a company with 50 employees all leaving their laptops on charge, this would amount to a potential saving of £840.00 over a ten day Christmas break were they all to be switched off.

Office equipment now accounts for around 15% of all the electricity used in the UK, but it’s an easy place to make huge reductions on energy consumption. For example, switching off a laser printer in the evenings and also at weekends, can reduce its energy consumption by a staggering 75%! Monitors and PCs are often also left switched on overnight.

So, going forward into 2019, perhaps a great New Year’s resolution for any business, might be to reduce ongoing energy costs, thus helping to save the planet, but also to reduce costs for the business going forward.