How can TPIs help businesses to reach net zero?

Since the Government announced its target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 in 2019, ‘net zero’ has become an increasingly important issue for UK businesses of all shapes and sizes. For many, achieving net zero carbon emissions presents a significant challenge, which means there’s a real opportunity for TPIs that can support businesses on their net zero journeys.

If your energy consultancy can provide businesses with the expert advice and tools they need to achieve net zero, then you could bring new customers on board and provide greater support for your existing customers. It’s therefore worth exploring how you could help businesses to…

Get to grips with their energy use

The first step in any organisation’s net zero journey is to understand where they are now in terms of their carbon emissions. They need to know how much energy they’re using, as well as where and when they’re using it, so that they can calculate their existing carbon footprint. Once they have a clear picture of their current carbon footprint, they will be able to start considering the best strategy for your organisation to achieve net zero.

Energy consultants can support their business customers in getting to grips with their carbon footprint by helping them to collate and visualise their energy data. Software like SystemsLink’s Energy Manager, for example, can help your customers to see exactly where their carbon emissions are coming from in relation to their energy consumption. Energy Manager allows for the import of all utility data from a range of sources, including the automatic importing of data from Building Management Systems and Half-Hourly Meters, streamlining the data collation process. Your customers can then create tailored reports on their consumption, so they can get a clear picture of their utilities usage and map out their carbon footprint. By providing them with these tools, you can help your business customers to hit the ground running on the road to net zero.

Make progress towards their net zero target

Once a business has a clear understanding of its carbon footprint and has announced its net zero target, they will need to take action to ensure that they can achieve their goal. Savvy businesses will want to put a practical plan in place, as this will help them to prioritise their decarbonisation actions and stay on track. If you can help businesses to build a net zero plan and implement efficiency measures, you will be able to build long-term partnerships with your customers as you can support them throughout their net zero journey.

When it comes to helping your customers to create a pragmatic decarbonisation plan, SystemsLink’s Energy Manager software tools can be very useful. Your team can analyse your customer’s energy usage and create reports to compare their consumption across different sites and utilities, so they can present the customer with their most pressing areas for improvement. Any actions your team recommends should focus on these areas first, but you should also encourage your customers to consider the measures they could take in the long-term, too. This way, they will have a clear route to their net zero goal, and your business can support them every step of the way.

Measure their progress

With a detailed plan for reaching their goal in hand, your customers should have everything they need to achieve net zero – but your support shouldn’t stop there. It’s vital that businesses measure the impact of the decarbonisation actions they take, to ensure that they’re on track to meet their goal. Monitoring their progress will also allow your business customers to shout about their sustainability successes, which can provide a welcome boost to their brand’s reputation.

SystemsLink’s software provides a range of tools designed to help businesses to monitor their consumption, which means you can see their progress against their net zero strategy and milestones. You can carry out a trend analysis and compare their consumption with previous years, for example, to demonstrate where they have successfully reduced their consumption (and their carbon emissions as a result). Your team can also input the customer’s benchmark and net zero target, so they can see how far they have come and how much they still need to do. You can even rank your customer’s sites according to their performance, so they can encourage competition and greater adoption of sustainability measures across their locations.

For customers who would like a real-time understanding of the impact their energy consumption is having in terms of carbon output, you may wish to introduce them to our Carbon Intensity tool.

Comply with energy efficiency schemes and legislation

Around 12,000 businesses are currently required to comply with the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) scheme and 7,000 organisations are obliged to report under the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS). As pressure increases on businesses to contribute to the UK’s net zero target, it’s likely that these schemes will be extended to even more organisations, which means a growing number of businesses will turn to their TPI for support with compliance.

Many businesses find compliance with energy efficiency schemes complex for a range of reasons. Collating all of the data they need to submit can be extremely time-consuming if they don’t have a robust data collation process in place, for example, they can be required to make complicated calculations, such as the intensity ratio required by SECR. Your team’s expertise can provide invaluable support for your business customers here – so if you’re not already offering a compliance service, it’s time to consider doing so. With SystemsLink’s Compliance tool, you can extend your capabilities to include support with a range of energy reporting schemes, from SECR & DEC’s to ISO 50001.

Supporting your customers on the road to net zero

With SystemsLink’s software on board, you can provide your customers with all the tools and advice they need to meet their net zero goals. Our software can be completely white-labelled, so that these services are a seamless extension of your existing offering. To find out more, call us on 01234 988 855 or email sales@systems-link.com.