[The following is a guest post brought to you by uSwitch For Business]
Businesses are facing a great deal of pressure in these days of recession. As well as simply trying to stay afloat they need to consider their environmental impact. The good news for businesses is that in many cases financial and environmental savings can go hand in hand and there are resources available such as uswitchforbusiness to help companies do a better job of business energy management.
Business Energy Management: A Way To Improve Your Bottom Line
Business energy consumption can be one of the major costs faced and can be a difficult cost to tackle. When staff are employed in an office or building to run a business, electricity and gas are needed to keep the work environment lit and heated as well as keeping equipment such as computers and machinery working – another benefit of using “work from home” days as a method of showing employee appreciation.
One way of saving money is to compare business electricity and gas costs. Comparison websites will allow businesses to compare the costs of business electricity and gas amongst all the major UK suppliers. Inputting details into these companies will give your business access to the many deals and offers available to business users from these suppliers to find ways of saving money.
Depending on the amount of energy your business consumes, shopping around for a cheaper supplier could save your business hundreds or thousands of pounds a year.
As well as finding a better energy deal online, there are many other ways of saving energy costs and improving the environmental profile of your company. You may need to get your employees on board to implement some of the changes necessary to save money such as encouraging them to switch off office equipment when not in use rather than leaving it on standby.
Business Energy Management: Simple Things Make A Huge Difference
Your business could save up to £35 on each computer and monitor each year by ensuring that it is properly switched off when not in use overnight or on weekends and bank holidays.
Using energy saving light bulbs and encouraging staff to switch off lights when they leave the room could cut your business’s lighting bill by up to 15 per cent and up to £400 could be saved annually by making sure taps are fully turned off and any dripping taps are fixed as soon as possible.
Turning the heating thermostat down by one degree could reduce your business’s heating bill by as much as eight per cent. It is likely that your staff will not even notice the slight drop in temperature.
Getting Grants To Help You Save
As well as encouraging staff to have some responsibility for cutting energy costs it may be worth your business investing in energy efficient equipment. Grants that are available from the Carbon Trust to help towards the cost and the overall savings on energy bills are likely to make the initial investment worthwhile.
There is plenty of information and advice available for businesses from the Energy Saving Trust on ways to reduce energy costs and become more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. The Trust can help to evaluate your energy consumption and offer advice on ways of making savings.
photo by jannoon028
Improving the way we use energy is important, and I always think that companies underestimate how much could they save by educating their employees to a better use of electric equipment. However, I think that energy efficiency is a two legs animal, and use energy better is only one leg. The other leg is using renewable energies. I’m seeing more and more companies installing solar panels where I live. Tax incentives can give a great boost to the use of solar panels, more solar panels would mean more R&D investments by producers that would see a profitable and growing business.
What do you think about installing solar panels at business locations? Do you think that would yield enough profit to be worth the installation?