Information is key to energy sustainability.
If you don’t exactly know how much energy you use (annually / quarterly / daily / hourly), then you don’t exactly know how much energy (and CO2) you can save. This is going to be the cornerstone of our sustainability effort.
The world revolves around money. If we can help people save money on their energy bills and help their business to become more sustainable at the same time then that makes sense doesn’t it? The 7th step of the 2nd pillar of the SEAI’s energy map “identify”, is “Identify total energy consumption and develop an energy baseline”. http://www.seai.ie/EnergyMAP/About_Energy_Map/Overview_of_the_pillars_and_steps/
As an energy consultancy, our clients give us access to their energy data. Taking the effort to download energy data and manipulate it in such ways that it becomes useful is not something that a lot of businesses take the time to do. With most focusing on making money as opposed to saving it.
www.energybroker.ie are a small company (three employees) with a relatively high number of clients (we broker in excess of 2000 meters per annum), and as such it is impossible for us to track how much energy they all consume. However, if we are selective, we can track the usage of our highest consuming client meters. So that is where we will start.
Today we are sending SEAI bill trackers, filled in from Jan to Sept 2016, to our highest consuming clients in the hope that over time, on understanding their energy use patterns, they will at some stage take steps to reduce consumption. It’s going to be a long but interesting road ahead.
If you wish to start a bill tracker you can download one here: http://www.seai.ie/EnergyMAP/Resources_tools/Template_Energy_Use_Cost_Savings_/Energy_Bill_Tracker_Tool/