Organising energy saving

Organisational elements
Working systematically with energy savings is a good foundation for delivering actual savings, and for prioritising the areas which produce the greatest results.

Systematic efforts should include:

• Collection of data about energy consumption
• Survey of energy consumption in order to choose the areas of initiative
• Survey of current activities
• Survey of the organisation, roles and responsibilities
• Energy savings targets and action plans
• Implementation of the elements in the plan (e.g. energy aware operation, planning and purchasing)
• Ongoing audit of targets and action plans

Survey

• In order to achieve energy savings you will need to make a survey of the current situation. You could consider the following questions:
• What is you current energy consumption?
• How far have you progressed with energy savings previously?
• Which buildings are you responsible for? Do you own or rent the buildings?
• What are your policies in relation to purchasing?
• What resources do your staff have, with the focus on the energy savings team (know-how, time, surplus, inventive)? Consider whether there is a need for further education and training.

Anchored across the organisation
Projects should be anchored to the areas where decisions can be made. For this reason, a good idea is to set up "energy savings team s" spanning the whole organisation:

• Project manager (e.g. person responsible for energy)
• Representative from the finance department
• Representative from the technical department
• Representative from the purchasing department
• Representative from the operations and maintenance department

It is important to clarify which role management will play. In some cases representatives from management will join the project team. Another option is for management to keep in close touch with the work via project managers.

Targets
When it comes to defining your targets, you should ask the following questions:

• How much money/man hours do you want to use?
• What percentage amount do you want to save?
• How much time do you want to spend to meet your targets?
• What is realistic? For inspiration you can look at View Electricity Consumption, which lets you see how much power similar municipalities/institutions use.

Energy management
Working systematically with energy savings does not necessarily have to be the same as energy management. You can choose how formal you want the process to be, how thoroughly you want to go into it, how many resources you want to allocate, and which areas you want to focus on.

If you want certification of your energy management system you will need to fulfil all the requirements and criteria laid down in BS EN 16001, which is the European standard for energy management.

A useful rule of thumb, however, is that organisations with annual energy costs of EUR 40,000-54,000, or under, should start off with an informal system. In this way you can benefit from initial experiences and savings without incurring major costs.