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| Lights are often left burning in offices at night. Photo: caribb |
With no end in sight to our tight economic times,
companies are redoubling their efforts to reduce costs. The continued high cost of energy makes this
a favourite area to target. Just how
much can a company actually save on its energy bills?
Savings from
equipment
Anything that uses power – electricity or process heat –
should be your number one priority.
Lighting uses about 40% of a building’s power and is a top target, with
savings of 40-70% of lighting energy within reach. The Carbon Trust estimates that investing in better lighting equipment can reduce electricity
consumption by 20%. Motors and drives
are another area with great potential for savings – up to 60% according to ABB – and payback periods are usually very quick for switching to variable speed
drives.
Virtually all machines have potential for improvement,
either through replacement of less efficient technology, or introduction of
controls to make the best use of the technology you have.
Savings from
buildings
Buildings are great wasters of energy. The principle problems come from heating and
cooling. Older building stock often
suffers from inadequate insulation – the standards and practices set in the
past were based on lower energy costs. Even
newer buildings designed with high energy efficiency in mind may not perform as
expected if commissioning was rushed, or if building use differs from what was
initially envisaged.
Savings from waste
Waste costs far more than most firms realise. The cost of disposal is a tiny fraction of
the true cost of waste. Consider the cost of producing that waste in
the first place – not just materials but also the labour and facilities
time. Even worse is the waste that slips
past quality controls and isn’t identified as waste until it reaches a
dissatisfied customer.
Figures on waste vary dramatically, but most firms waste
considerably more than they realise. In
the food industry it totals around 30% of production – in developing countries
most is lost at harvest and storage, and in the developed world it is lost most
through consumers and distribution.
Much waste is actually visible to employees, but often
considered unimportant, or impossible to eliminate. The source of these attitudes is often in a
failure to realise just how much waste costs.
Also, it is difficult to tackle waste that is unintentionally designed
in to agreed processes and systems.
Savings from
behaviour change
How often have you passed an empty office building at night
and seen all the lights blazing? For
those of you who have worked in production facilities, how many times have you
seen refrigeration unit doors left open, or machines left idling between
shifts? In the service industry, have
you ever seen an open plan office where all the computers and printers were
shut off at night? Who has seen windows
opened because the air conditioning or heating was set too high?
We need control over the equipment that serves us, but often
in the rush of work people make choices that waste energy. Replacing equipment may mean that the waste
is reduced, and in some cases controls can help, but an even better solution is
to eliminate this waste altogether – and without capital cost – by changing
behaviour. Of course this is no easy
task – but there are approaches to educating and motivating the people that
really work.
How do you know how
much you can save?
There are three essential steps in estimating how much you
can save. First, you must footprint your
firm – find out how much energy you use, in what forms, when, and for what
purpose. This takes time to set up, but
it is well worth it in terms of the savings it prepares you for.
Second, you need to estimate the potential to change each
area of energy consumption. This can be
done at a high level, through benchmarking and similar comparative exercises,
or at a more granular level by looking at technology alternatives or proportions
of energy wasted.
Third, you need to pull together this analysis to show the
big areas of energy spend, and the top areas of potential improvement. Bring together the key people from across
your organisation to examine the results.
Chances are that any area of potential savings is going to involve many
departments – this is one of the reasons energy efficiency opportunities are
often not spotted.
If you need help with any of this, please contact us: enquiries@jlsbm.co.uk. We offer unbiased advice and expert
consultative assistance to UK firms.
