Energy saving for business

Saving energy and keeping bills down (sometimes these have separate motivations, sometimes the same one, depending on how green your outlook) are issues faced by both businesses and households, and there’s not one simple fix.

How any one place achieves reductions depends on a number of things – the type of home you live in or the sort of building a business operates from, how many people are in the building, what times of day the buildings is active, whether you’re on a windy hillside, mid-terrace or seven floors up etc etc.

Take control of your energy costs

Some things are applicable to everyone though. We’ve just read an article from GreenWise (now no longer available online), primarily aimed at energy saving for business, and we were genuinely shocked to read point no 3:

3. Take control
Review your utility prices on an annual basis. Barely 15 per cent of small businesses know what rate they are paying for electricity

This applies to households just as well (and goes beyond energy tariffs) and is a vital piece of the jigsaw. It can be tempting to switch the lights off, turn down the thermostat, fit an Ecoflap and not look too closely at the fine detail of energy prices, but to find the most cost-effective solution for the fuel you will inevitably use this information is a must-have.

Draughtproof the building

The GreenWise article is a brief, bulleted run-down of the issues around energy saving for business, but most of them apply to households too. It boils down to having proper information, taking opportunities to change to better tariffs, shopping around and asking for expert help if need be.

Just as all the energy use monitoring in the world and clever thermostatic control mechanisms won’t in themselves do anything to stop draughts whistling in through your letterbox and around badly-fitting windows, neither will simply knowing how much you pay for energy. Ensure that your premises is as leak-proof as possible, then apply the other measures to make sure the energy you do use and pay for is kept to a minimum, its effectiveness is maximized and its price is as low as you can negotiate.

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