From compliance to revenue generation: edie survey reveals increased ambition among energy managers

The vast majority of energy managers have taken their organisation beyond the compliance level of energy efficiency by making sites self-sufficient through on-site generation and opening up new revenue streams from surplus power.


That is the top-line result of a new benchmarking survey carried out by edie in association with energy company E.ON, which asked energy managers to identify the energy efficiency activity they had already completed or had underway.

VIEW THE FULL SURVEY INFOGRAPHIC HERE

The survey covered off five tiers of an energy efficiency performance ‘pyramid’: Compliant, Knowledgeable, More efficient, Self-sufficient and Generating revenue. Respondents were evenly distributed in terms of business size, ranging from SMEs to organisations with more than 5,000 employees.

Ninety-five percent of the survey’s respondents identified with the ‘more efficient’ stage of the pyramid – the most-represented section. In the ‘more efficient’ stage, energy managers said they had moved beyond just being ‘compliant’ with energy regulation and being ‘knowledgeable’ about how to become more efficient, to actually installing energy efficiency technologies and delivering behaviour change initiatives.

Energy-efficient lighting was the most popular technology among respondents in this ‘more efficient’ part of the survey, having been installed by a third of respondents (31%). Behaviour change initiatives had been implemented by 17% of energy managers, while 12% had installed a building energy management system (BEMS).

Interestingly, the proportion of survey respondents in the ‘self-sufficient’ stage of the pyramid remained high, with 73% of energy managers claiming to have moved into generating energy on-site. Solar was by far the most popular technology here, having been adopted by 59% of respondents.

Half of respondents (47%) said they had installed combined heat and power (CHP) systems on their estates, followed by 30% that have installed heat pumps and a surprising 17% that have already implemented energy storage systems. Encouragingly, 32% of respondents in this ‘self-sufficient’ section of the survey claimed to have electric vehicles within their company fleets or operations.

Finally, at the top of the energy efficiency performance pyramid – ‘Revenue generation’ – a significant 44% of survey respondents said their organisation is now generating income from surplus energy. The majority (63%) are doing this through demand response technology, with the rest either exporting excess energy to the grid via mechanisms such as the feed-in tariff or in the process of implementing new demand response solutions.

The full results of edie’s energy efficiency benchmarking survey, carried out in association with E.ON, are available to view in full as a free-to-download infographic.

View the energy efficiency benchmarking infographic here.

edie recently hosted an interactive webinar in association with E.ON, which provided expert insight and advice about cutting through the complexities of energy management. Watch the webinar on demand here.

edie staff

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