DO you know the size of your company's carbon footprint? Or that of your home? Very few of us can answer yes to either of those questions. Does it matter? Yes, and here are two reasons why:

Understanding your current carbon footprint and setting a reduced target is the first step to embracing carbon reduction and taking control of energy consumption and cost. Once you know your footprint for 2009, you can draw a line in the sand and set an ambitious but realistic target for 2010.

So how can you reduce your carbon footprint? Here are some simple steps:

These measures are the first step towards an energy management program and we believe that every organisation should have one. For new buildings more stringent designs will take care of getting a good starting point. For existing buildings an energy management program is essential for plotting a sustainable way forward.

The UK Government has committed us all to an 80 per cent reduction of CO2 levels from 1990 levels by 2050. This is going to be extremely difficult to achieve.

Ambitious plans and building regulations are already being put in place that will require from 2016, for example, all newly built homes and some other buildings such as schools to be zero carbon. Soon after that, all other new buildings will be required to be zero carbon. This is going to involve using renewable technologies such as wind power, wave power, solar power and biomass heating on a large scale.

What about existing buildings then? That is a big problem because there are, of course, many of them and some are many decades, even centuries old.

The energy management program is a useful umbrella under which several energy initiatives can sit, such as:

Building services engineers and consultants are intimately involved in energy management and energy performance matters at the design stage for both new and refurbished buildings.

It is crucial these days that the building services consultant is involved very early in the project so that low and zero carbon technologies, renewables, sustainability and energy management issues are considered properly from the outset.