Revisiting your commercial energy strategy: 8 actions for 2024

Energy prices saw an unprecedented rise in the last few years, reaching their peak at the end of the summer of 2022. Fortunately, the situation for wholesalers has changed and prices have now fallen.

This makes the first quarter of 2024 the ideal time to revisit your commercial energy strategy. Find out what you should be doing and how Ignite can help.

How to respond to the reduction in energy costs

With lower prices and more competition between suppliers, it’s a great opportunity to examine your overall strategy. In this article, we break down eight actions your business can take to reduce energy usage and costs.

1. Review your energy procurement contract

If your procurement isn’t properly managed, it can derail budgets and forecasts. At Ignite, we work with businesses on a case-by-case basis to create bespoke energy procurement strategies. We can provide flexible and fixed procurement options depending on your requirements, ensuring that the benefits of each align with your goals and you strike at the right opportunity.

Unsure if fixed or flexible procurement is right for you? Read our guide.

We also offer renewable energy procurement. We can help you set up a Corporate Power Purchase Agreement (CPPA) agreement that provides a fixed price for green electricity for up to twenty years.

2. Validate your business energy bills

We’ve seen countless businesses pay too much for their energy bills. Our thorough validation process checks every element of your invoices so discrepancies are identified and resolved.

We can also retrospectively validate your invoices, going back up to six years. Errors or anomalies are queried with suppliers and you’ll get a refund for any overpayments. Our services have helped businesses recover over £1mil in aggregate – without them using any capital.

3. Improve your energy data

Data unlocks opportunities. Without it, it’s almost impossible to identify and prioritise poorly performing areas across your estate to know where you can add value.

Ignite can provide you with energy reporting and data management services, providing in-depth reports that include the information you want to see. Once you have the right equipment in place and data at hand, we’ll analyse that data and implement tailored energy efficiency projects.

4. Standardise your estate

Inconsistent processes across your estate mean increased expenses, time wasted arranging individual contracts and less sustainable energy usage.

Ignite has plenty of experience helping a wide variety of businesses to implement a range of standardisation processes. This includes efficiency projects rolled out at scale and improving processes and data collection (such as half-hour metering).

5. Assess your building management system

A building management system (BMS) monitors your equipment – including lighting, heating, air-con, alarms and refrigeration – and energy usage whilst allowing you to make decisions across the whole of your estate with a single click.

Paired with our custom BMS dashboards, you can see what’s going on across your estate, make changes remotely and adjust your energy strategy accordingly.

A BMS doesn’t make sense for some businesses. Ignite’s Cloud-BMS offers a cost-effective alternative for businesses that use air conditioning but do not have a BMS on site. Using CloudBMS, you can remotely adjust settings, set up rules and monitor all air conditioning units in real time. It’s quick to install and seamlessly integrates with any existing equipment.

6. Develop your net zero strategy

With the focus off budgets for now, it’s time to start thinking about net zero.

If you plan to develop your own strategy, focus on more than offsetting carbon emissions and make sure you report on Scope 3 in your greenhouse gas emissions reporting. You should make sure to regularly review your strategy to ensure you’re making progress.

Ignite has a huge amount of experience developing long-term sustainability strategies for a variety of businesses providing real results.

7. Get on top of your energy compliance

Depending on the size of your business, there may be energy schemes you need to comply with:

• If you qualify for the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) Phase 3, the compliance deadline is 5 June 2024. See our breakdown of everything you need to know as the deadline nears. Ignite offers a full ESOS compliance service led by fully qualified ESOS lead assessors. See if you qualify here.
• Other reports to think about include SECR, GHG Reporting and the TCFD.

Ignite can provide energy compliance and reporting services. We understand the requirements and will analyse your data and integrate findings into your overall strategies.

8. Create an employee-led sustainability programme

To implement sustainable practices, everyone in your business needs to be working towards a common goal. Some of the most important people in making this happen are your employees.

Ignite can work with people across all levels of your business to increase engagement in energy data to reduce consumption and drive energy savings. It’s a cost-effective and highly effective way of reducing usage and increasing savings. Learn more about involving employees in your sustainability strategy here. 

Ignite is on hand to help

As you reassess your energy strategy, Ignite is on hand to help. We are the experts in energy management for large businesses and can assist you with any of these actions. For more information and to get in touch, email enquiries@igniteenergy.co.uk, call us on 0333 023 2222 or fill in our contact form.