Energy audits are a great way to better understand a business’s energy consumption and with soaring energy costs, possible winter blackouts, conducting an energy audit can help you to kick start the new year.
What is an energy audit?
An energy audit consists of reviewing your business’ energy consumption to analyse and identify any areas of improvement that can be made. You may have conducted an energy audit in the past but it’s something that should be revisited regularly.
Why should you conduct an energy audit for your business?
With the cost of energy still relatively high for many UK businesses, ensuring that you aren’t paying for more than you use is a key part of keeping costs low. An energy audit is a perfect way to identify if your sites are using more energy than they should, either during a time when you aren’t open, throughout the night for example or if a machine is not as energy efficient as it should be.
An energy audit looks closely at every aspect of your business whether you’re based in an office building or a manufacturing plant, from lighting to heating, water usage, air conditioning and electrical devices. An energy audit will highlight any areas of improvement where energy savings can be made, and costs reduced.
What are the benefits of an energy audit?
Here are some ways an energy audit benefits your business or organisation.
1. Reducing costs
The main benefit that an energy audit offers are reducing your business’s energy costs. A high energy bill may not be only caused by the increased cost of energy or increased usage, and the cause for these increased costs could go unnoticed for many years.
2. Claim back overpayments
When reviewing your energy, it’s always good practice to review your previous energy invoices. Many supplier invoices are understood to be incorrect, and many businesses simply don’t have the time to review historical invoices to recover overpayments. Working with an expert to validate your bills up to 6 years, can help give your business a cash injection and ensure you are only paying for what you use.
3. Reducing emissions and supporting your ESG
Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) is something many businesses and organisations are striving to achieve to improve their standing with both customers and the board and investors. Reducing your carbon emissions is vital not only to meeting your net zero and ESG targets but also to your bottom line.
4. Complying with legislation
Similarly, reducing your energy consumption will support your business in meeting its legislative requirements. Many businesses are required to comply with legislation, for example, the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS). Compliance is mandatory and an energy audit can help your business to meet its obligations.
5. Extending your equipment’s lifespan
Ensuring that your appliances or machines are operating as efficiently as possible will help to reduce the amount of energy used. Inefficient older technology tends to consume more energy. Upgrading your equipment will help to streamline operations, perform better and will lengthen its lifespan.
6. Mitigating risk
In energy business’s energy strategy, mitigating risk is a key piece of the puzzle to help ensure critical future growth and certainty. An energy audit helps by providing transparency and assurance in taking control of your energy costs. Boosting compliance, brand reputation and helping to secure funding. Investors now also take climate-related risks more seriously including the level of emissions your business releases. The greener and cleaner you can make your business and its operators, the more futureproof your business will be.
Mitigate rising costs powered by your energy data
Keeping on top of your business’s energy, particularly if you have multiple sites, can be challenging. SystemsLink’s Energy Manager is one of the UK’s leading energy management platforms and can help you better manage your energy and utilities.
With an in-depth and intuitive system, you can easily monitor your electricity, gas, water, oil, solid fuel, biomass, LPG, and waste and analyse using the built-in reports to ensure your business is operating effectively. Setting targets and budgets in line with your business’s overall strategic goals can help you to stay in control.
Other features include:
- Trend analysis and comparison with previous performance
- Comparison with targets or benchmarks
- Ranking of sites according to performance
- And much more…
Learn more about Energy Manager.
Review your 2023 energy strategy:
When it comes to managing your energy, you’re not alone. Our experts can help you to review your 2023 energy strategy, conduct a full energy audit and help you to implement, monitor and analyse its recommendations.
Speak to our experts about your business energy today by emailing sales@systems-link.com.
