There are many good reasons to manage energy:
- Cost Savings: There are typically investment opportunities with a rate of return greater than 30 per cent available from energy efficiency. Where else would you obtain such a high return?
- More Informed Energy Contract Negotiations: In order to get the best energy supply contracts, a contract manager needs sound, readily accessible data, and an understanding of the performance of the facility or operational group.
- Concern for the Environment: The 'Greenhouse Effect' is accepted as a problem requiring changes in the way that energy is used, and reducing the production of greenhouse gas emissions. The most effective way to do this is to reduce unnecessary energy use or improve energy efficiency.
- Good Energy Management is simply Good Management Practice: Ensuring that energy use is efficient and effective should be just one more aspect of good management within the organisation.
- Many Energy Problems are Linked to Service Problems: Fixing these problems has the spin-off effect of improving the quality of the working environment or equipment performance, which can increase staff morale and productivity. The effects of this can multiply the energy savings tenfold.
Corporate sustainability and streamlined reporting
Energy data will often underlie some of the requirements for energy, greenhouse and corporate sustainability reporting. Having a good energy management program can ensure the data is of high quality, and the processes for its collection are streamlined. The case for having an effective energy management policy is overwhelming. The 'working energy' program adopts an integrated approach to energy management, and is designed to help you achieve the maximum level of benefits, both in terms of energy savings and the improvement of quality in your workplace.
Energy savings without suffering
Energy efficiency is about getting the same or better service from less energy. This is in contrast to energy conservation, which generally involves doing more with less. This latter approach is no longer seen as acceptable practice - life has to go on, but we need to be more careful about how we use resources to get the best result for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.
Thus the critical issue for energy efficiency and energy management is to identify the services that are needed and make sure that these are being provided cost-effectively and for the least energy use. This is a two-pronged approach that means we have to assess what services (and quality of service) we really need, as well as the energy associated with the provision of those services.
This broader approach to energy management is critical if you want to gain the full value of an energy management program. For every dollar of energy cost, your organisation probably spends twenty dollars on salaries. This means that every dollar spent on energy can leverage up to twenty dollars of salary costs because if there's no power, you can't work. At the lesser extreme, inefficient energy services that provide poor service may reduce productivity, which translates ultimately to salary costs. Therefore, it is essential to take an integrated view of energy not merely as a supply issue but also, and indeed primarily, as a service issue.
Energy as core business
One of the reasons that energy efficiency opportunities are ignored is that they are not considered part of the core business operation. To some extent this is true.
The relevant issue for business is the services that energy provides, such as light, cool air or steam, and not so much about energy itself. After all, who cares about electrons or lumps of coal? The question is how these are used to provide the things you need to work. In this respect, energy is critical to core business.
The costs of energy are also often seen as being low in the scheme of things. However, if you are in an organisation with 100 staff, it is likely that the energy bill is equivalent to the salaries of between two and five staff. An energy saving of 20 per cent, which is generally easy to achieve, is therefore worth one person's job. Most people would consider that implementing a few simple energy savings measures is good value if it saves or creates a job. After all, the alternative is to pay for waste that nobody benefited from.