An activity based approach to minimize energy usage of service sector infrastructure

Indian power sector is highly energy deficient with grid frequency going as low as 48 Hz. Constraints on electricity usage from state electricity boards are imposed on industrial and commercial sectors so as to minimize load curtailment in residential sectors. Also with climate change playing an increasing role in our lives, efforts are underway to promote energy efficiency in infrastructure usage. As a consequence of these two facts most organizations consider `greening their infrastructure' as one of the top concerns. The conventional way of quantifying infrastructure efficiency is by monitoring energy consumption at the resource level which does not help in taking decisions on investment in energy efficient projects. In this paper we emphasize the need and explain the methodology to arrive at energy consumption at activity and business process levels. The objective of this paper is to develop a tool with which the energy consumption of activities and business processes can be estimated, so as to avoid the need to meter all of them. Results are presented from a case study carried out in one of the delivery centers of Tata Consultancy Services.