How Do I Report Utilities When Renting Office Space?

Why rented offices still matter in your ESG report

If your company rents its office rather than owning the building, it's easy to assume the environmental impact of that space is someone else's problem. It isn't.

ESG reporting is built around the idea that a company reports the environmental impact of its own operations — and that includes the space where employees actually work, regardless of who owns the building. Whether you're in a serviced office, a coworking space, an office hotel, a shared office building, or a traditional leased office, the electricity, heating, and water used to run that space are part of your operational footprint.

This applies across common rented office setups, including:

• Serviced offices
• Coworking spaces
• Office hotels
• Shared office buildings
• Traditional leased offices

Renting an office doesn't remove the responsibility to include relevant environmental data in your ESG report. What changes is how you collect that data, since you don't have a utility meter with your company's name on it. That's the practical challenge this article works through.

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Which utility data should you collect?

For most small and medium-sized businesses in a rented office, the environmental data worth collecting falls into a fairly predictable set of categories:

• Electricity consumption
• Heating consumption
• Water consumption
• Cooling, where relevant (for example, air conditioning in warmer climates or server rooms)
• Waste, if your provider tracks it
• Lunch or catering services, where the office provides shared meals or canteen facilities relevant for broader environmental reporting
• Other shared utilities included as part of your lease or membership agreement

Exactly which of these matter most for your ESG report depends on your reporting framework and what's material to your business. A small consultancy in a coworking space will have a very different profile from a company running lab equipment in a shared building. But as a general rule, utilities are considered relevant operational data for any office-based company, and it's worth attempting to collect all of the categories above rather than assuming they don't apply.

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Step 1: Ask your office provider first

The best starting point, before building any estimation model, is simply to ask.

Reach out to your landlord, coworking operator, or office hotel provider and ask directly for your company's consumption data. A simple request works well:

"Can you provide our company's electricity, heating and water consumption for the reporting period?"

Many landlords and serviced office providers already track this information at a building or even a tenant level, particularly if they bill utilities separately or sub-meter individual offices. Some may be able to give you company-specific figures immediately; others may only have building-wide totals, which is where allocation methods (covered below) come in.

As a general principle in ESG reporting: direct, actual data should always be preferred over estimates whenever it's reasonably available. Asking first, before assuming you'll need to estimate, is the quickest way to get the most accurate figures with the least effort.

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Step 2: If direct data isn't available, use proportional allocation

If your office provider can't break out your company's specific consumption, proportional allocation is a generally accepted estimation method.

The logic is straightforward: if you know how much space or how many desks your company occupies relative to the whole building, you can estimate your share of the building's total utility consumption.

A practical example

Say a building has 100 workstations in total, and your company occupies 10 of them. Assuming no other tenant in the building has unusually high electricity consumption — for example, no one is running:

• A server room
• Manufacturing equipment
• A laboratory
• Heavy industrial equipment
• Other highly energy-intensive activities

In this scenario, it is generally reasonable to assume your company represents approximately 10% of the building's total utility consumption.

In this case, you would:

1. Request the building's total consumption figures for electricity, heating, and water from the landlord or property manager.
2. Calculate your proportional share based on the number of desks or the office area your company occupies relative to the whole building.
3. Apply that percentage to the building totals to estimate your company's consumption.

This approach won't be perfectly precise, but it represents a reasonable estimation methodology when better data simply isn't available. The important caveat is that this method assumes reasonably even usage across tenants — if another tenant runs something energy-intensive like a server room, your proportional share based purely on desk count could significantly understate the reality, and it's worth noting that limitation if you're aware of it.

Whichever assumptions you use, document them. Good ESG reporting practice means being transparent about how a figure was derived, not just what the figure is.

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Step 3: Check what your invoices already tell you

Before building your own allocation model from scratch, it's worth checking your lease agreement and monthly invoices. Many rented office arrangements already include an allocated utility cost, meaning the allocation work has effectively been done for you.

These invoice-based allocations are typically based on one of the following:

• Floor area occupied
• Number of desks or workstations
• Shared ownership percentages
• A building-specific allocation key
• Other contractual distribution methods agreed in the lease

If your invoice already shows a utility allocation calculated this way, it's generally acceptable to use it as the basis for your reporting, as long as it represents a reasonable approximation of your company's actual share of usage. This can save considerable time compared to building a proportional allocation model yourself, so it's worth checking your existing paperwork before doing the calculation from scratch.

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Estimation is better than omission

It's tempting, when exact utility data isn't available, to simply leave the rented office out of the ESG report. This is one of the most common mistakes small and medium-sized businesses make, and it's worth avoiding.

Excluding a material part of your operations because the data isn't perfect undermines the credibility of your report more than a reasonable estimate would. The GHG Protocol and general ESG reporting practice both favour transparency and reasonable methodology over precision at any cost.

In practice, this means working through the options in order of preference:

1. Collect actual data whenever possible — ask your provider directly.
2. Use proportional allocation when company-specific data isn't available, based on desks or floor area.
3. Use invoice allocation keys if your lease or bills already provide them.
4. Clearly document the chosen methodology, including any assumptions made.

A transparent, reasonable estimate — clearly labelled as such — is significantly better for your ESG report than a gap where material operational data should be.

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How Wardn helps document office utilities

Once you've gathered utility figures, whether direct, allocated, or invoice-based, the next challenge is keeping that information organised and consistent from one reporting period to the next.

Wardn is built to support exactly this kind of practical documentation. Inside the platform, companies can:

• Record utility consumption for electricity, heating, water, and other categories relevant to a rented office
• Document estimation methodologies, so it's clear whether a figure came from direct data, proportional allocation, or an invoice allocation key
• Keep audit-friendly documentation, so the reasoning behind each number is available if a customer, auditor, or stakeholder asks
• Maintain consistent reporting year after year, using the same structure and methodology so comparisons over time remain meaningful

Rather than managing this in scattered spreadsheets or email threads with your landlord, Wardn gives you a structured place to log the data and the reasoning behind it, so your rented office is properly represented in your ESG report without becoming a recurring headache each reporting period.

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Frequently asked questions

Do I need to report utilities if I rent my office instead of owning it?

Yes. ESG reporting covers the environmental impact of your company's operations, including the space you work in, regardless of who owns the building. Renting rather than owning doesn't remove this responsibility — it just changes how you collect the data.

What if my landlord won't give me exact utility consumption figures?

If direct data isn't available, proportional allocation is a widely accepted alternative. You estimate your share of the building's total utility consumption based on the desks or floor area your company occupies, provided no other tenant has unusually high energy use that would distort the estimate.

Can I use the utility allocation shown on my office invoice?

Yes, in most cases. If your lease or monthly invoice already includes an allocated utility cost based on floor area, desk count, or a similar allocation key, this is generally acceptable to use as the basis for your ESG reporting, as long as it reasonably reflects your actual share.

Is it better to estimate utility data or leave it out of the ESG report?

Estimating is almost always better than omission. Excluding a rented office because exact data isn't available leaves out material operational information. A transparent, well-documented estimate — using proportional allocation or invoice allocation keys — is considered acceptable practice under the GHG Protocol.

What utility data should a company in a coworking space or office hotel collect?

At a minimum, aim to collect electricity, heating, and water consumption. Where relevant, also consider cooling, waste, and shared catering or lunch services. Ask your provider first, and fall back on proportional allocation or invoice-based allocation keys if direct figures aren't available.

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