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Leaving lights on overnight is a massive waste of energy and money
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Research by the Carbon Trust shows British businesses could save up to 20% of their energy costs by becoming more energy efficient. For many companies that’s the same as a 5% increase in sales, which should be a massive incentive for businesses to explore the options.
For many organisations there is also the need to comply with the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC), the mandatory scheme for large energy users across the public and private sectors to improve energy efficiency. These organisations will have to monitor their emissions and purchase allowances for each tonne of CO2 they emit. The more CO2 an organisation emits, the more allowances it has to purchase and by increasing energy efficiency it can buy fewer allowances and also save on energy bills.
Beyond the CRC
In addition to the CRC scheme, becoming energy efficient within your business can provide a number of benefits:
• Reduced costs: as a result of lower energy consumption, your bills will be lower.
• Tax incentives: these are available for some businesses that buy and use energy-efficient and water-efficient technologies or low-emission vehicles.
• Improved image: promoting yourself as a more environmentally friendly business is a strong marketing message which is likely to please both existing and potential customers to your business.
Staff engagement
If you’re serious about saving energy and money within your business, you’ll need someone on board to help make this happen. Give an interested member of staff additional responsibly of being your energy champion. Look for someone who will enthusiastically promote the cause, raise awareness and drive the messages and behavioural changes needed to lay the foundations for effective energy efficiency.
Action plan
Once you’ve appointed your energy champion, you could follow our six-step action plan to help to focus their efforts. The plan is designed to help you manage the process of making your business more energy efficient, broken down into six manageable areas:
1. Behaviour
We know that the biggest hurdle to overcome is not the desire for businesses to become greener, but getting the whole business to share this vision. That means buy-in from the top to the bottom of your business. Research from E.ON revealed that only a minority of businesses (14%) currently invest in the training of staff to change their behaviour towards energy consumption. So, with full backing from the top, empower your energy champion and give them time to understand where energy is being used around the business and then collect the opinions and behaviour of other employees.
2. Establish
A vital step towards reducing energy costs and increasing efficiency is establishing how much you’re actually using. To help gain control of the situation your champion should see what past information is available by reviewing energy bills and analysing the data month on month or year on year. They should also make an inventory of all equipment around your business that uses large amounts of energy. Ensure you know when the equipment is likely to be in use, what its energy rating is, and carry out spot checks to make sure equipment is not being used unnecessarily;
Walk around the building to assess when and where energy is used and investigate energy usage outside normal working hours, when cleaning for example. Your energy champion can speak to colleagues about energy wastage – they might have identified areas of high usage or particular wastage but not known what to do about it.
3. Compare
Use your current energy use as a benchmark. Start by taking a meter reading and another one a week later before you start with any energy-saving initiatives. Where possible this should be an average week and not one where production or opening hours are more or less than usual. Then, as you continue through the other steps, you’ll have a usage figure to benchmark against – this way you’ll really see the difference you’re making. Keep taking regular readings and recording them so you can plot your usage over time.
Many companies now offer tools that can help you reduce your businesses energy consumption, so check with your energy supplier. E.ON offers its Business EnergyManager package to help qualifying businesses gain a much better understanding of when and where electricity is used. As part of the package, you'll receive an energy monitor and software to help you learn more about your usage habits.
4. Identify
At the same time as monitoring and comparing your energy usage, it’s worth trying to identify where savings can be made. This can range from a simple identification of waste to a detailed investigation into available technologies.
Examples of activities might be:
• Walking through the buildings at different times, particularly during quiet periods and out of hours, and spotting where things can be turned off.
• Keeping an eye on seasonal changes and the setting of heating, lighting and air conditioning systems.
• Briefing out-of-hours staff (such as security and cleaning staff) to switch equipment off when they leave the building or carry out security checks.
• Identify equipment which uses the most energy and then techniques that could help reduce this amount.
5. Plan
Develop a business strategy for saving energy now and
in the future by working out an action plan to make the company more energy efficient and competitive.
Key steps should be:
• Draw up a hierarchy of activities – starting with no cost/low cost actions, then medium-term modifications and finally long-term investments.
• Obtain the interest and commitment of others in drawing up your list of priorities. For it to work, everybody within the business must take ownership of the plan – your champion can’t do it on their own.
• Set out a timetable of tasks and targets and say who will be responsible for them.
• Communicate what you’re doing and what your goals for success are. This will help to raise awareness and engage colleagues.
6. Monitor
Continue to watch over the process, constantly monitoring energy usage and identifying more ways to save energy and money. For energy efficiency to be an ongoing project, planned actions need to be tracked, followed-up and eventually evaluated. The evaluation should be fed back to management and all staff who have been involved in the process, making them aware of how and where progress is being made. Going full circle, and back to the early steps of comparison, identification, planning, implementation and so on, makes the steps a virtuous circle of energy efficiency improvement.
Experience
E.ON itself has been through this action plan, with more than 300 staff becoming a team of energy champions. Over the last four years, the overall office target has been set to reduce energy consumption per person and the company has achieved a reduction of around 48% per person.
Absolute emissions from office buildings have been reduced by 13.7% over the last three years, which has amounted to a reduction of 2,354 tonnes of CO2 across 67 buildings, saving almost £350,000.
Jane Lomas said: “As an energy firm we recognise the environmental impact of our business. That is why we use our expertise and innovation to ensure that we act in a responsible manner and continually work to reduce our impact on the environment in all areas of our operations.”
Visit www.eonenergy.com/business for more tips and advice.
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