It’s very likely that energy costs are a significant proportion of your businesses’ outgoings, so keeping those costs under control – and reducing them if possible – is important for maintaining profitability and achieving future success.

There is no shortage of organisations that are only too pleased to offer their services to help you do this – for a fee, naturally! The usual promise is that they will find you a cheaper energy supplier and there is, of course, nothing wrong with that. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has repeatedly said that almost every business can benefit by shopping around for energy and being prepared to change supplier to get a better deal.

But we urge you take a wider view. Don’t think only about how much you pay per kWh for your energy, think also about how effectively you use the energy on which you’re spending your hard-earned cash. To introduce you to the way we think, here’s a simple but rather illuminating analogy.

If you discovered that your car was using more fuel than it should, and you found out that the fuel tank was leaking, what would you do? Would you try to keep your fuel costs under control by finding a garage that sold cheaper fuel, or would you have the leak fixed? The right answer, of course, would be to do both, but repairing the leak would surely have to be the priority!

Now let’s look at this in terms of business energy usage. Almost all businesses in this country are leaking energy – studies by the Carbon Trust show that, typically, savings of around 20% are possible – so it’s essential to fix this leak rather than simply rely on finding a cheaper energy supplier. And, of course, there’s another very good reason for fixing the leak: the effect on the environment. A cheaper energy supplier may reduce your energy bills, but it will do nothing to improve your carbon footprint!

So how do you go about finding and fixing the energy leaks in your business?

Simple! The series of articles below provide the answers in the form of useful suggestions that are practical, cost-effective and easy to implement, so feel free to go ahead and check them out. You can also read the full version of our more comprehensive white paper, which will give you a good overview of what you need to look out for in order to get the most out of the energy you pay for.