As a business owner or manager, your objectives will usually be straightforward – maximising profits and ensuring the business is productive and efficient. Whilst sales will always have the biggest impact on a business’s profits, an often overlooked internal issue that can help streamline profits is reducing energy costs. It’s estimated that the average SME business spends well over £3000 on energy each year, a cost that can be vastly reduced by implementing some simple energy saving tips.
In order to reduce costs for your business when it comes to energy, there are a variety of different factors to consider. By looking at your business as a whole and its energy consumption there are many areas where you might be wasting energy that can be saved. To help business save on their energy costs, we’ve put together our 10 top energy-saving tips:
1. Turning off devices when you leave the office: Shutting down at the end of the day is crucial in saving energy and reducing money on bills. Even in standby mode, your devices are using unnecessary energy. If you aren’t doing this already, make sure everything is turned off when staff leave the office.
2. Adopting energy efficient practices: Most good utility companies offer off-peak initiatives where some parts of the day cost less to use energy than at peak times. Try and use most of your energy during off-peak hours, and also encourage your employees to do the same.
3. Install Energy Control Window Film: Maintaining heat within the building has always been a logistical nightmare for businesses. However, by installing Energy Control Window Film installations could allow you to save up to 30% of your energy costs with a payback period of as little as 3 years. Energy control window film from Guardian Window Film has a lifespan of over 20 years meaning your business will save on energy bills for over two decades.
4. Energy Audit: Many utility companies offer these for businesses. Some even offer the service for free when you join, so give them a call to get one of these for your business. They will help identify the key areas where you need to trim down your energy needs and reduce costs.
5. Compare different energy providers: As with everything, it pays to shop around. Use our handy comparison tool to compare energy tariffs from top energy providers and get yourself the best deal!
6. Consider renewable energy: The initial cost of this puts off many business owners, however, renewable energy is great because it’s free, clean and the cost can be recovered within a few years. Solar panels are a great option and have few maintenance problems. Here are also government feed-in tariffs that will support businesses who generate their own electricity.
7. Replace existing bulbs with CFLs/LEDs: Not only do CFL and LED lights provide a longer lifespan they also consume less power. They are also inexpensive to replace and can reduce your energy consumption by 75% compared to a standard light.
8. Replace old heaters: Whilst this could potentially be costly, old heaters are bad at two things: heating the office and being energy-efficient. Having poor heating can also leave employees disgruntled during the Winter months which is bad for morale and is against health and safety regulations.
So, if your heaters are more than 10 years old, consider swapping them for newer ones. Not only are newer designs much better at heating a building, but they also use up far less electricity when doing so.
9. Invest in a programmable thermostat: A programmable thermostat has the capability to automatically adjust the temperature of your workplace when no one is working. Less air conditioning use can result in significant energy savings for your business.
10. Government tax breaks for energy efficiency: As well as having tax breaks for renewable energy, Local Governments may also provide tax incentives when you buy energy-saving appliances for your business. These are certainly worth investigating when looking at renewable energy sources.
How to implement these changes
All of the steps above can play a crucial part in saving energy costs for your business. Try and implement some of the smaller changes as soon as possible to see savings on your next energy bill. Getting into these habits will not only reduce costs but help you promote a healthy work environment within the workplace. Some of the bigger changes such as solar power and energy saving devices will be a larger business decision. For more information on how to save energy in your office or to discuss any of our energy saving window film products – get in touch today.