An activity metric is a measure of the activity that your organisation undertakes. You must report annual values for activity metrics for every year from the start of your energy efficiency baseline period to date.
Your organisation's progress towards the 2030 energy efficiency target is tracked using an organisation-level energy performance indicator (EnPI). Your EnPI accounts for changes in the activity level related to your organisation's energy use. This activity level is quantified using activity metric(s). Note that activity metrics are not used for tracking your organisation's progress towards either of the 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
Ideally, your activity metric should quantify the key activities that affect energy use in your organisation. However, selecting a good activity metric for an entire organisation can be tricky. The most important characteristics for a good activity metric are that it is directly relevant to what actually drives energy consumption, well defined, understandable and measurable. Data availability is also a key factor, especially for large, complex and multi-site organisations.
Different public bodies use energy for different purposes. The right metric for your organisation will depend on what activities drive energy consumption in aggregate in your public body.
You can select an activity metric that is relevant to your organisation from the list shown on the choose activity metrics screen.
A simple activity metric is an activity metric based on a single activity. All activity metrics that are not composite activity metrics are simple activity metrics.
Some organisations can define their own activity metric. If this option is not available for you, you can request it from SEAI using a request link in the system. After an initial review of your request, SEAI will contact you by email and will likely ask for additional information to get an understanding of the key drivers of energy consumption in your organisation. If SEAI concludes that defining your own activity metric is appropriate for your organisation’s circumstances, SEAI will then configure system accordingly. This process could involve a few rounds of communication with you.
Determining a single organisation-level activity metric for large or complex organisations can be difficult because different aspects of the organisation’s activity consume different amounts of energy (different energy intensities). In such cases you can develop a composite activity metric, which is an activity metric based on multiple discrete activities. A composite activity metric is defined by two or more activities (sub-activities), each of which is assigned a weighting which must sum to 100%.
The scale of each sub-activity’s contribution to the overall activity metric is specified by you and should be based on each sub-activity’s share of the overall energy consumption. For example, in this way, a local authority could build a composite activity metric based on the following two sub-activities:
The formula used to calculate the composite activity metric results in a composite activity metric of 1,000 at the start of the activity metric period.
Note that using a composite activity metric is only appropriate for instances where all of the sub-activities have been undertaken every year since the start of the activity metric period. If the drivers for energy consumption in your organisation have fundamentally transformed over time, you should consider using multiple activity metric periods.
An activity metric period is a period of years during which a public body uses the same activity metric to track its energy performance. If the drivers for energy consumption in your organisation have fundamentally transformed over time, you should consider using different activity metrics to track your energy efficiency in different activity metric periods.
You can change your activity metric during any reporting cycle.
How you calculate your activity metric(s) is up to you. However, it is essential that you calculate each activity metric in the same way each year. You must retain records of your calculation of your activity metrics for each year.
You must report annual values for all years for FTE employees.
One FTE employee corresponds to one full year of work by one person. The number of FTE employees can be calculated by dividing the total hours worked by the average annual hours worked in a full-time job.
Your organisation probably has a well established methodology for calculating FTE employment – your HR department/person should be able to give you the relevant FTE employment figures for each year and explain the methodology used. It is important that your organisation submits FTE employment data calculated in the same way every year.
FTE employment is not used by SEAI for like-for-like comparisons of energy performance across the public sector for two main reasons. Firstly, the relationship between energy use and FTE employment varies significantly in different types of public body. Secondly FTE employment may be calculated in slightly different ways in different organisations.
You must report annual values for total useful floor area (TUFA).
TUFA should only be calculated for buildings (defined as roofed constructions having walls) in which energy is used to condition the indoor climate, i.e. for which energy is used for space heating, cooling, ventilation etc. Therefore, buildings in which no energy is used for heating, cooling or ventilation should not be included in the TUFA calculation. Once you have calculated the TUFA for each relevant building, you should add the values together to calculate a total organisation-level TUFA in square meters for your organisation.
TUFA is based on the building area measurement specified for the preparation of Display Energy Certificates (DECs) – in compliance with European Union (Energy Performance of Buildings) Regulations 2012 (SI 243 of 2012). It is the same as the Gross Internal Area (GIA) commonly used in commercial property surveying, and for which measurement conventions are based on the SCS/IAVI Measuring Practice Guidance Notes. The method of measurement of total useful floor area is also set out in Technical Guidance Document L of the Building Regulations, which states that 'linear measurements for the calculation of wall, roof and floor areas and building volumes should be taken between the finished internal faces of the appropriate external building elements'.
In this convention:
Some building sectors commonly use alternative measures of area, notably net lettable area (NLA) for the commercial office sector, and sales floor area (SFA) for retail premises. Where these are the only measurements available for these building types, then the calculation may use standard, conservative, conversion factors to obtain TUFA from NLA or SFA. These conversion factors and the building categories for which they may be applied are set out below.
|
Category |
Brief description |
Approved alternate floor area |
Default multiplier applied to alternate floor area to obtain TUFA |
|---|---|---|---|
| General office | General office and commercial working area | Net lettable area (NLA) as measured by Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) |
1.25 |
| General retail | General street & retail services | Sales floor area (SFA) |
1.80 |
| Large non-food shop | Retail warehouse or other large non-food store | Sales floor area (SFA) |
1.80 |
Source: SEAI Methodology for the production of Display Energy Certificates (DEC)
The only alternative to using these defined conversion factors is to measure and provide the total useful floor area (TUFA) directly.
Some local authorities use population served as an activity metric or as a sub-activity for a composite activity metric.
Population served should be calculated in accordance with population data published by the CSO for relevant local authority areas. Population values for non-census years should be extrapolated in accordance with robust assumptions regarding rates of population change over specific periods.