Companies wake-up, savings are right below your nose! The key is energy management. Especially today with the increasing cost of electricity in Greece. What can a company do to reduce its energy consumption?

Do you really know what’s going on in your business?

Managing energy starts from a very important step: understanding what and how energy is consumed in the office. To succeed, a business has two options: make the energy diagnostic with internal resources by affecting personnel to this task or rely on external services. The first solution allows you to dedicate your own personnel which will then realize better the big picture and avoid incurring additional costs. The second solution will cost to the company but allows it to receive a professional diagnostic from specialist of the energy with the expertise.

This diagnostic must allow the company to:

• Have an accurate list of all the equipments consuming energy;
• Identify for each type of equipment the consumption factors;
• Finally, after collecting re4al statistical data on site for a small period, have a base to plan (time of usage of the equipment per day, number of employees, etc.)

At the end of the diagnostic period the company must be able to have a clear view of the consumption, the factors that affect it and where actions must be taken. The goal is to reduce the energy consumption without affecting the long-term profitability and quality of the products and services of the company as much as the comfort of the employees. The improvement of working conditions is mandatory and unavoidable goal for all companies.

Once a plan is decided, the actions must be launched and followed in order to ensure that they have the result expected. Nothing will work if the employees are not well informed and trained.

With the correct arguments, everybody can be convinced

A company is “an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital” (definition from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company), meaning that no action decided will be efficiently implemented if the staff is not aware. For any business desiring to launch an efficient energy management plan, the employees must:

• Understand the context and rationale of the energy management,
• Realize and detect the key factors that are source of energy saving in their function,
• Identify the tools and method to work greener,
• Be motivated to adopt greener behavior at work.

Transparency on the objectives of the management towards employees is mandatory to ensure their investment and participation. Informing the employees before starting the project, educating them during the different phases and ensuring that new policies are well communicated will guarantee quick and efficient results.

Think green act green

The diagnostic allows detecting the high energy-consuming equipments. There are a lot of ways to act on the equipment; here are some ideas (depending on the company and its activity):

• Installing motion-detecting light sensors (MyPlanet products’ buildings are totally equipped with motion-detecting light sensors and they are quite satisfy). With this technology, when employees live a room the lights turn off automatically – no more “Ach… forgot to turn off the lights!”
• Replacing (directly or progressively) printers, computers or any workstation with greener technology/solution (for example: a laptop consumes 50% to 80% less energy than a fix computer, etc.). The main labels for equipment are the certifications of Ecolabel (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecolabel/) or Energy Star (http://www.energystar.gov/).
• In winter, regulating the warming system from 20°C to 19°C can reduce the consumption by 7%.
• Arrange internal and external logistics to optimize the energy management (transportation companies: have you put in place a route optimization plan).
• Integrate carbon criteria in the purchasing standards of the company.

As you see green company culture can be applied without engaging high costs or unbearable changes. The most important is to understand your business and take into account the people in your business when defining your objectives. Of course, investing today can bring many savings in the future.

Do you … renewable energy?

Even if the times are difficult, avoiding investing (when funding is possible) is not the best solution. By definition, an investment will pay back in the future and thinking long-term is a pillar for sustainable development. Invest in renewable energy can provide a real benefit for the organization, especially in the future when becoming a producer of electricity. In Greece, there is no real government aid to invest in green energies and all the system is organized around banks and energy providers, the various actors in the sector usually represent the link between the company, the energy provider, the banks and the legal issues (to obtain a license when needed). Energy providers usually propose the following services: evaluation of the need and proposal of the adequate installation, support for the acquirement of the needed rights/license, support in finding the best funding solution, proceed to the installation and offer after sales’ technical support.

Bleneraida Consultancy is here to support/accompany you in this task, if you are interested do not hesitate to contact me here.