Member Article

Cut costs and go green

With Colin Grimston of Business Link

With an early winter cold snap already turning up the dial on heating bills, now is the perfect time to improve your energy efficiency, increasing profit margins and helping the environment in the process.

According to Carbon Trust estimates, many businesses could cut energy costs by over ten percent. The total average annual saving for a small business maximising its reductions is around £250, increasing to as much as £5,000 for larger employers.

The Business Link website www.businesslink.gov.uk/northeast has extensive information to help you reduce your bills in the Save energy and cut cost section. This also provides an interactive tool to identify where you can save money by going green. Here are some of the top tips:

• Get staff to turn off equipment when not in use. A single computer and monitor left on for 24 hours a day will cost over £50 a year.
• Don’t heat or light unoccupied space. Turning off unneeded lights can produce significant savings. Switch to energy-efficient bulbs and achieve savings of up to 75 per cent on lighting bills. Also remember, sunshine is free; make the most of Mother Nature by positioning workspaces and equipment close to windows.
• Control your temperature. Lowering the temperature by just 1 degree can reduce the heating bill for a typical office by up to 8 per cent a year and won’t turn staff into icicles. Poorly maintained heating equipment could also increase your bill by 10 per cent, so get it checked out.
• Use price comparison websites to seek out the good deals available for switching energy suppliers. There can be as much as a 50 per cent variation in cost between the lowest and highest rates offered.
• Talk to your existing energy supplier about the products they have available to boost energy efficiency. For example, they may install a smart meter to monitor energy use.
• Finally if you work from home, insulating your property is one of the most effective ways to cut costs and could pay for itself in less than two years.

For further information on Business Link, and how to cut costs and save energy, visit www.businesslink.gov.uk/northeast or call 0845 600 9 006.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BENE .