We’re doing a series of energy audits, at the moment, for some sizable energy using clients of one of our corporate customers. They’ve included numerous factories, offices, call centres, farms and workshops all over the country, from the South Coast all the way up to Scotland.

I somehow expected that this size category of customer would have been more efficient than the smaller sites we see, but nothing could be further from the truth.

In all cases identified, savings have been over 25% and for many, savings have been greater than 40%, running into 10’s of thousands of pounds per year. For the most part, savings opportunities are so simple; pipe lagging on steam pipes, timers on heaters, leak repairs on compressed air systems, many of which will pay back in well under a year. 

Yet, for some reason, the news of savings is greeted with resigned acceptance rather than enthusiasm and I do wonder how many of the recommendations are going to be actioned. If only we could instil the interest that seems to surround solar panels and the use of heat pumps which, in comparison, may payback in 7 years (not 7 months).

It is simply not good enough to be fixated with generating renewable energy. If we are to be truly competitive in ‘free trade agreements’, or to ‘save the world’ with lower carbon emissions, we need to reduce our use. It’s simply the cheapest and most cost effective thing you can do to achieve these ends. Believe me, we wouldn’t need nuclear power stations or be worrying about importing lots of gas from Russia, if we just used less.

If you’d like an energy survey, give us a call, and see what you could save.