Sage Blog

On Wednesday we had some of the team from the Carbon Trust in our Newcastle office. They are launching the Best Advice campaign and, calling on local businesses to cut their energy costs by between 20% – 30%, by signing-up for a free Carbon Survey.

Paul Stobart, our UK CEO, launched the Best Advice campaign in Newcastle by speaking to the media and the campaign is also backed by leading business groups, politicians and a range of successful companies across the country.

Since 2006, the Carbon Trust has delivered over £180m in energy savings to British businesses through its Carbon Surveys.  The Carbon Trust estimates that British businesses currently spending between £50,000 and £3m on their annual energy bills, could reduce their collective energy spend by more than £3bn by implementing energy saving actions of the type specified in Carbon Trust surveys.  

How can your business be more energy efficient? 

Now and in the future businesses need to consider three key steps in addressing energy efficiency:

• Changing behaviour (e.g. encouraging staff to switch off lighting, heating and machinery when not in use)
• Installing energy efficiency controls and settings (to automatically turn off machinery and equipment when it’s not in use)
• Upgrading old, energy intensive equipment with new energy efficient models (e.g. replacing old boilers, and lighting)

 What tips and tricks could you use?

 Switch lights off in empty rooms

• You could cut your lighting costs by as much as 15%, just by making sure you turn lights off in rooms and corridors that aren’t being used

Don’t turn up the heating unless you really need to

• Try to keep your thermostat at 19°C. Your heating costs will go up by 8% each time you increase the temperature by just one degree

Maintain your equipment properly

• If you don’t regularly check your heating equipment, you could be adding as much as 10% to your heating bill without knowing it

Vending machines v kettles

• It is cheaper to provide a kettle for staff who work outside normal business hours than to continue to run a drinks vending machine during these times

Standby

• A single computer and monitor left on 24 hours a day will cost over £50 a year. Switching them off out of hours and enabling standby features could reduce this to £15 a year each and prolong the lifespan of equipment

Lighten up

• Replacing high wattage filament lamps or tungsten halogen lamps with compact fluorescent lamps or metal halide lamps will give energy savings of 65-75%

Find and fix compressed air leaks

• Compressed air leaking through a single 3mm hole could cost you nearly £700 per year in energy costs

Motors and drives

• Swapping a single 10kW motor running at 25% loading for a 2.5kW motor running at full load can save around £300/year
• Leaving electric motors running over weekends across the year could cost over £2,000 per motor
• Lowering the speed of a motor by just 20% can produce an energy saving of up to 50%.

Leigh Thompson, Corporate Social Responsibility team