If you don’t know where you are, how can you know how to get to where you want to be?
That is the question we put to many of our clients when discussing the Climate Change Agreement’s (CCA) Target Period 5 (TP5).
Progress analysis and monitoring of energy consumption data is crucial if companies, especially those within energy-intensive industries, want to meet TP5.
The final target period of the CCA has been extended by the UK government for two years to incentivise industry to reduce its energy consumption against production in the overall drive towards achieving net-zero.
But by doing that, they have also moved the previous base line, from which data is measured against, from 2008 to 2018, to reflect any energy efficiency measures or improved productivity that may have taken place across the intervening 10-year period.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS) has recommended a 6.67 per cent decrease against the 2018 figures.
Raising the bar
Effectively the bar has been raised and companies need to do more if they are to meet the target, whether that is reducing the amount of energy used for the number of units they produce or produce more units but without using any more energy.
Energy Management’s National Account Manager Ian Scattergood has urged companies to address the situation before it is too late.
“The majority of the businesses whose energy data we have analysed will miss TP5 if they don’t act now,” he said.
“It’s a blunt message but they wouldn’t have got to this point had they carefully monitored their energy performance against production output.”
Identifying issues
A thorough monitoring process is easy to implement and will pay off further down the line, he adds.
“The greater the granularity of the data, the easier it is to see if there are any anomalies. If you are only looking at a month’s worth of energy consumption, it is more difficult to pinpoint days when there are spikes in energy use. Daily monitoring allows businesses to identify problems more readily.
“How can you fix a problem if you don’t know it exists?”
Once anomalies in energy consumption have been flagged through the monitoring process, companies can then look at what energy efficiency measures need to be taken.
“This could simply be changing work practices or staff behaviour – measures that don’t necessarily need much investment from a financial point of view, just a cultural buy-in from everybody involved,” added Ian.
“Beyond that, companies might consider site surveys which delve deeper into all operational aspects relating to energy use. Recommendations for ways things can be improved will then be put forward.”
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