It's no secret that energy bills are high, and heading (much) higher. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that in 4.2 million commercial buildings across the United States, an average 30% of the energy bill is pure waste. During 2007 (latest figures available), energy wasted $60.7 billion of operating budgets.
As a result, the two pressing questions before most businesses and commercial building owners are "how can we identify wasted energy expense?" and "How can we do something about it?"
While these two questions are obvious, the answers to them are not. One recent answer (particularly from government agencies) has been "Cover the rooftop with solar." As almost any Chief Financial Officer or accountant can tell you, those "solar" numbers seldom work.
Another answer gaining rapidly in popularity is "Get your building an energy audit." On the face of it, that suggestion makes a lot of sense. But dig a little deeper and you will discover several pitfalls.
First, most commercial energy audits are offered by energy product sales people. They are not engineers and they have a strong bias (which is the need to sell their product). While many of these product sales people offer "free" or "low cost" commercial energy audits, the audit quality they deliver is what "free" or "low cost" pays for.
Another common pitfall is the fact that even the best commercial energy audit processes do not adjust their calculations for necessary risk mitigation. A watt is not just a watt, and a dollar is not just a dollar when safety issues, the possibility of business interruptions and the certainty of continuing energy cost increases have to advise both engineering and financial calculations.
A third problem with many commercial energy audits (and auditors) is that they are attempting to adapt a home energy audit process for commercial purposes. A thin commercial veneer stretched over a home energy audit process simply cannot work.
So, what's a business or commercial building owner to do? How can he or she take a chunk out of the monthly energy bill, cost-effectively and reliably?
One good answer is by passing on traditional energy audits and, instead, going directly to Energy Due DiligenceTM. The Energy Due Diligence process (and supporting software) was developed by the energy engineers at Big Green Zero. Energy Due Diligence can identify the components of energy expense in almost any commercial or industrial environment. The process then considers a wide range of business risk mitigation. Finally, it calibrates strategic options for increasing operating income and real estate capitalized equity value in the most cost-effective manner possible..
For most businesses and commercial building owners, reducing energy cost is the best way to shrink an operating budget. And, the best way to reduce energy costs is through Energy Due DiligenceTM.
For more information visit http://www.BigGreenZero.com, or contact Info@BigGreenZero.com.
Big Green Zero helps commercial real estate owners turn energy pennies into equity dollars. Big Green Zero Energy Due Diligence™ reduces risks, recovers cost and increase capitalized equity value in commercial and industrial properties.View the original article here
PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 04, 2011 - Some companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on the bottled water, even in these difficult economic times. While cuts are being made in other areas of business operation the cooler is overlooked. In addition to the invoice cost of the water the cooler costs businesses money in several other ways. Employee down time spent taking deliveries, switching out bottles, tedious accounting time spent keeping up with the ever changing bill amounts and the risk of time loss and law suits from on the job injuries caused by handling the 40+ pound bottles. Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of these coolers... the wasted space on storing the bottles. Some companies have an entire room devoted to storage of the big plastic jugs. In NYC where real estate prices are sky high there is actually a significant cost related to storing these archaic bottles... again overlooked.