Green for Micro Project
Solar Powered co-working company – Greening the already green business
Sky Business Centres is a leading operator of business centres, providing fully serviced offices and virtual office facilities to clients around Dublin.
They offer a network of flexible serviced offices that provide you with the convenience of a secure furnished workspace specifically designed for business requirements. They also offer various virtual office solutions for those who require a professional business presence without the need for physical office space, providing you with the tools to allow your business to grow.
As an office facility their carbon footprint is primarily in heating and lighting and from office equipment use. Their usage of electricity is primarily daytime and therefore the sites are highly suited to Solar PV.
There are three facilities in Sky Business Centre’s current portfolio, located in Clonshaugh, Damastown and Clontarf. In both Damastown and Clontarf, there are two buildings. We undertook a walk through audit of each of these buildings to identify practical opportunities for implementation to reduce costs and carbon emissions.
The objectives of this assignment was to quantify the carbon footprint of the business and identify opportunities to take Climate Action, reduce costs and improve the environmental sustainability of the business. Support in a specific challenge around HVAC was also required.
As a concept, all co-working offices offer some level of sustainability that exceeds regular working environments. With different businesses and freelancers sharing space and amenities, co-working means less waste. In one of the offices, ventilation was a challenge and multiple different suppliers provided multiple different solutions. Some solutions presented by vendors would have negatively impacted the energy use and thus increase carbon emissions.
A number of solutions were presented including:
The identification of opportunities to potentially reduce costs by 68.5% through large installations of Solar PV on a number of the offices, LED lighting and energy efficiency.
With the recommended options Sky Business Centres could reduce their Climate impact by 65% and offset the remaining 35%.
Offset of remaining emissions through Self Help Africa’s million trees program develops societal benefits in Africa, while allowing Sky Business Centres achieve their goals.
Arran Street East 
