Key Benefits
1. An accurate understanding of energy use
2. Ability to monitor and model energy consumption
3. Identify inefficiencies and cost savings
Why should I track energy-use data?
Improving the quality of emissions data is key to understanding the true environmental impact of your business.
Recording your energy usage in kWh, cubic meters or litres enables your facilities and finance team to know exactly how much energy the business is using rather than the cost of the energy used.
What are the benefits of tracking energy-use data?
Energy prices are rising sharply. Using spend-based data makes it difficult to track whether rising energy bills are purely caused by an increase in unit price or whether your energy usage is rising too.
Having a better understanding of energy use brings into focus the energy efficiency of your buildings, processes, and assets. Greater data transparency leads to an understanding of the investment required to reduce operational energy consumption. Businesses that invest in technology to reduce their energy use often see significant and immediate savings from their annual energy bills.
As you begin to act on your climate commitments, using actual energy usage
data enables your teams to analyse the effectiveness of carbon reduction
initiatives aimed at reducing energy usage.
How do I track and record energy-use data?
You may use a mixture of fuels so it’s important to measure the units of electricity, gas, as well as oil.
It may be as simple as creating a spreadsheet and recording usage data from your energy bills. Alternatively, using your accounting package or CRM system, create a mandatory field to make it easier for this data to be recorded, tracked, and reported.
How can I further improve the integrity of my energy data?
An energy bill only provides an overall picture of your gas or electricity use. It doesn’t provide you with an insight into where the usage came from and how efficient your assets and systems are.
In a typical office, energy is used for lighting, refrigeration, cooling, computers, office equipment, cooking, space, and water heating. Each of these energy sources may have multiple assets associated with them, all with varying degrees of use and efficiency.
An energy monitoring system is a way for businesses to track, monitor and model energy consumption in a high level of detail, right down to an individual asset.
It provides insights for facilities managers, enabling them to see inefficiencies in energy use, and empowers them to make data-driven decisions. Energy monitoring systems provide the tools to drive down costs, improve performance and reduce carbon emissions.
Next Steps
Once you begin to track your actual energy use, perform an annual Energy
Audit to consider the age, condition and performance of your lighting, hot
water, heating, and air conditioning systems. Then you can create a list of
investment priorities to make further savings on your energy bills.
