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A company’s journey to better energy management has seven straightforward phases: through them, you can hit your energy efficiency targets and sustain the gains you make. So where is your business in the journey? Take a look at the seven steps below

1. The benefits of energy efficiency

Energy efficiency could bring your business long-term benefits. Firstly, it brings significant, ongoing cost savings that make a real difference to your bottom line. There are many other benefits too. A business that manages its energy well can also enhance its reputation through improved environmental credentials.

When you can clearly demonstrate a committed environmental policy and a strategy for cutting carbon emissions, it sends a strong signal of intent to your customers and business partners. Because energy efficiency focuses on improving working environments, the solutions required usually also improve staff wellbeing. The energy efficiency journey is focused on staff engagement – and that can improve the bond between an organisation and its people.

Of course, each business that improves its energy efficiency also brings benefits to us all through a reduced impact on the whole environment. If every business reduces the amount of energy it uses, we’ll cut our collective dependence on the fossil fuels that contribute to climate change. By making small changes, we can all make a big difference to our world.

2. Making the commitment

While there is a strong business case for energy efficiency, making changes takes commitment. It also takes accountability. Too often, nobody is actually responsible for energy efficiency in an organisation so nobody takes charge. That’s why one of the earliest steps on the journey is identifying who is responsible and appointing an energy manager who is empowered to identify issues and implement solutions.

Depending on the complexity of your business, this could be anything from a part-time role to a full-time team. The key thing is ensuring that someone becomes your ‘green champion’, and has the responsibility and the resources required to shape and implement a policy that’s right for your business.

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Every business is different. It’s worth remembering that good energy management also requires good governance. You’ll need to make sure that proper management reporting is built into your strategy – and that it becomes part of the agenda for your management board. With commitment from the top of your organisation, you’re much more likely to succeed.

3. Define your starting point

In order to improve at anything, you need to make an honest assessment of where you’re at now. That means analysing your expenditure on gas and electricity, as well as gathering data on how it fluctuates from day to day and week to week.

In many ways, the more historical data you have, the easier it is to see the patterns in your business. Once you’ve got to grips with usage figures, you need to work out what all that energy is for.

Energy is used for a wide variety of things in business. The most common things are heating and lighting, and running the machinery and equipment your business requires. Once you understand why you need it and how you use it, it’s easier to work out how you can use less.

For example, it’s not uncommon to see lights or equipment left on when they aren’t being used, or heating that’s still on even when the windows are open. Energy management is everybody’s business; it’s worth engaging with staff early so that they help with your efforts.

What’s vital, however, is that you quickly build a picture of your current situation, that you rate how well you’re doing and that you set clear targets for improvement. Once you’ve done that, you can create a definite plan and get it underway.

4. Turning strategy into action

Your energy efficiency initiative can only succeed if you put your strategy into action. Having secured the backing of senior management and enlisted the support of the staff, it’s time to make a practical plan.

It’s important to set realistic goals. Think about the quick wins. What measures could you put in place that would be easy to implement, yet show immediate savings? Preferably, these won’t require any up-front investment. For example, turning down heating thermostats by just 1ºC can make a significant difference to costs.

The benefit of quick wins is that they demonstrate a principle. They show colleagues and management that there is a valuable return for the effort that they’re making. This allows you to develop a plan with both short-term and long-term goals, increasing the sophistication of the measures that you put in place and, perhaps, even funding more ambitious initiatives using the savings you’ve made.

As part of your plan, it’s important to keep all staff engaged. They need to buy in to the thinking behind energy efficiency, so it’s important to publicise any gains you make and to properly explain each measure you introduce.

It’s also well worth making sure your plan shows an orderly timetable of tasks and targets, that it’s properly costed and funded and that it has the backing of your management team. A clear structure and implementation timetable also make it easy to report on your activities and to measure actual success against your plan.

5. Are you with us?

Although making a commitment to energy efficiency is a senior management decision, the success of many energy-saving measures depends on gaining as much support as possible from the entire staff. For example, if everyone turns off lights and equipment when they’re not required, the savings soon mount up. Similarly, you’ll be more successful with heating regulation if everyone follows simple rules on thermostats and ventilation.

Remember, you’ll be trying to change the ways people behave so it’s important to encourage a sense of involvement. That means sharing your ideas and plans and actively promoting the ways that everyone can all help.

It’s also worthwhile in any size of organisation to identify ‘champions’ who will help the designated energy manager to promote ideas and look out for problems. After all, efficient energy management is a way of thinking and you’ll have to change beliefs and practices in order to succeed. In some cases, this can be made part of people’s job remits and can include training that counts towards their continuing professional development.

6. Taking stock

Throughout your energy efficiency journey, you’ll need to gather evidence of your progress. You’ll also need to measure it against your starting point. Having established a baseline that takes into account your historical usage and costs, it’s relatively easy to show how the measures you put into place are making savings for your organisation.

Of course, it’s vital that you report progress clearly and at the right level within the company. By demonstrating the savings (and other benefits to the company) it’s easier to get support and financial backing for further measures that would save you even more. In your energy reports you should show energy consumption for the period covered (and compare actual performance with any targets you’ve set). You may also want to show (and explain) any variances for the period.

Regular and detailed monitoring of your energy consumption can also alert you to any problems – and help you address them quickly.

In all of your reporting, it’s worth bearing in mind the varying needs of your audiences and tailoring them to ensure that people see the benefit to the organisation of the work being done.

7. Keep it up

A successful energy efficiency campaign takes imagination, determination and perseverance. While there are ways to make quick gains, it’s important to stay true to your principles and continually monitor and adapt your plans.

It’s also important to showcase your initiatives and share the results. While keeping your management board up to date with progress will satisfy your core reporting duties, energy efficiency is built on getting everyone on board. So make sure that everyone in the organisation can see the impact of the efforts they’re making and the importance it has on costs.

It’s always worth taking the time to celebrate success, and to recognise and reward those who have contributed to that success. You should find that your efforts make a valuable contribution to the overall improvement in your business, not just through cost savings but also through improved staff comfort and working conditions.

Remember, too, that as well as sharing results within the organisation, there may be external stakeholders who are interested in your success. Make sure they’re kept in the loop, as their support and endorsement could be invaluable in future projects.

Most important of all, keep going. Energy management is forever. Keep looking for ways to improve and make sure your organisation doesn’t slip back into old ways.

SSE Airtricity is Ireland’s largest supplier of 100% green electricity. For more information on how your business can go green, visit www.sseairtricity.com/business