Business Energy Users Survey - Winter 2008/09 - Moffatt Associates

npower Business Energy Index 2009npower Business Energy Index 2009(b) SMEs2.4 By how much have you managed to reduce your energy consumptionin the last 12 months?ResponseRatingEnsure unused equipment is turned off 7.7ResponseSMEs(5)SMEs(6)MEUs(5)MEUs(6)All(5)All(6)Monitor consumption regularly 7.1Educate staff 7.4Increase heating efficiency - reduce heat loss 6.6Increased lighting efficiency 6.4Changed equipment/technology 6.3Requested information, e.g. from Carbon Trust 5.7Introduced equipment meters 5.0Nil 45% 41% 15% 27% 30% 36%Less than 5% 18% 27% 27% 31% 23% 28%Less than 10% 4% 6% 2% 13% 3% 8%Less than 20% 7% 2% 6% 1% 7% 2%Don’t know 17% 14% 12% 17% 15% 15%Exact percentage given by: 9% 10% 38% 11% 24% 10%••For SMEs, the most important step they haveundertaken was to ensure that unused equipment isturned off. Other measures also rated as importantwere educating staff on efficiency (7.4) andmonitoring consumption regularly (7.1).For SMEs, the tendency to consider energy efficiencysteps increases with employee size. Regionally therewas little variation.•Amongst MEUs, the public sector attaches themost significance (7.3) to requesting informationfrom organisations such as the Carbon Trust, withmanufacturers (4.5) and/or service sector (4.5)companies trailing behind. The highest significancerating reported was also from the public sector(8.1) in relation to monitoring software.What steps has your company taken in the last 6 months to reduceenergy consumption and increase energy efficiency? And please rankthese in order of importance: (On a scale from 1 = not important upto 10 = extremely important)Selected comments“Lighting change is in progress all over thecountry. All new equipment is energy efficient -this question is top of the list.”“Lighting - short paybacks and very visiblefrom metering. We are looking at a major CHPscheme for Leicester.”“We are spending £1.3m this year on energysaving initiatives. We are also looking atmicrogen.”“We promoted good practice and altered shiftpatterns to [secure] better energy use.”“All sub two year return projects have beencompleted. All other identified projects areon a 7/8 year payback. We have no moneyfor these.”“In the current environment we are as efficientas we possibly can be but unfortunately whenthe plant is not at full capacity efficiencies fall.”“We’ve done a “train the board” programme.We do a lot of communication: conferences,web applications, articles, training. We havea whole energy programme.”Average of exact percentages: 9.9% 14.81% 11.5% 5.31% 11.3% 12%Weighted average of all companies: 3.2% 3.38% 6.9% 2.99% 5.2% 3.33%Weighted average of those who have reducedenergy consumption•••SMEs have been less successful than MEUs inreducing their energy consumption in the last12 months, with 45% reporting no drop inconsumption compared to 27% of MEUs.Where savings have been possible SMEs havemanaged to reduce consumption on averageby 6.46% compared to 7.1% last year.MEUs have not been able to manage the sameenergy reductions as the previous year with theweighted average of those who have reduced energyconsumption falling from 8.3% to 4.44%.7.1% 6.46% 8.3% 4.44% 8% 5.83%•Regionally there was little variation between SMEswithin the less than 5% and less than 10% bands.However, more companies in the Midlands, SouthWest and Wales managed to reduce their energyconsumption by between 10-20%.2425