Every business has expenses. Some of these are inescapable and will always need to be factored into your budgeting. However, there is nearly always some ways to reduce spending in some areas.
Whether it’s keeping up with the costs of rent, paying for the energy that you use, or keeping your break room fully stocked, there is always a more cost-effective way of achieving your goals.
Your business’s energy bills are no different, and with a little bit of work, you can easily reduce them. Here are 5 simple ways of doing just that.
Turn Off Your Lights
This is probably the simplest thing that your business can do in order to reduce your monthly energy bills, but it is also one of the most effective. This is a case of, ‘if you take care of the pennies, then the pounds will manage themselves.”
Making sure that you switch your lights off at night, along with any other non-essential systems, will enable you to dramatically lower your overall consumption.
In some cases, it will mean going from racking up your energy bills throughout the day, to only using significant amounts of electricity during trading hours. Of course, you will likely have security systems and other devices that need to remain powered overnight, so your usage is unlikely to drop to zero.
You can ensure that when you do use energy, you are paying as little as possible by using a price comparison tool for comparing business electricity suppliers, rates, and prices.
Embrace Cloud Computing and Outsourcing
This is mostly a tip for larger businesses – those that are in a position to consider outsourcing significant parts of their operations to outside agencies.
This might not seem like an obvious way of saving energy, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. By outsourcing some of your business to someone else, you can pass on the associated energy costs of doing the work to them.
Switching to cloud providers would enable some businesses to reduce the number of computers that they need to have running throughout the day.
This will reduce electricity consumption and will also eliminate the costs of maintaining an ideal operating temperature for computers themselves and the surrounding office.
Properly Insulate Your Office
Properly insulating your office will enable you to keep as much of the heat you do generate contained within the walls as possible. This, in turn, means that you don’t have to pay the energy costs of keeping your office heated.
Whatever heating system you have in place, it will be more effective if it is paired with some efficient insulation.
By better insulating your office, you will enable yourself to turn down the thermostat without having to worry about the temperature dropping too low.
Maintain Fridges and Freezers
Any workplace fridges and freezers can be potential energy hogs.
With a fridge, keeping it mostly empty actually consumes more electricity than when it’s stocked up. So, if there’s regular events that call for internal catering, don’t be afraid to make good use of the refrigeration space that’s available.
With a freezer, if it hasn’t been defrosted in a while, be aware that this will cause the unit to get overworked with the extra frozen ice. Not only will this wear out the freezer or the freezer section of a fridge-freezer combo sooner, but it’ll also use more electricity at the same time too.
If it needs it, clear out the freeze or fridge/freezer, lay some towels down for the water spillage and set about defrosting the freezer. You’ll probably need to chip away at some of the bigger chunks of ice stuck to the inside to give it a helping hand.
Once removed, these can be placed in the kitchen sink to break down over time; the excess water on the floor will be reduced this way.
Look into Changing Energy Supplier
Depending on the location of the business, there could be more than one possible energy supplier for a business there. Check to see what your options are.
If there’s more than one provider for businesses in the area, compare prices to see whether there’s cost savings per kilowatt to be made. Whatever the business use is, reducing the basic costs is always beneficial.
Reducing your business energy costs is easier than you might realize. Of course, you are always going to have some expenses, including spending on your energy. However, businesses should always be looking for ways to save money and reduce their overall expenditures.
