Earth Energy Savings

Purchasing energy is not something that anyone ever really relishes, is it? I mean, most of the time we don’t know what the prices that are being quoted are, or if they are real or whether someone is literally just making them up. The energy prices seem to change so often that it is almost impossible to be able to keep up with them. Energy procurement is a minefield and we are the ones that are either, not stepping into it and saying ‘I’ll stick with what I’ve got – better the devil I know’ or we are going in and being blown away at the first step in the mud. Either way, our energy risk management strategy is pretty much nonexistent and we are still paying through the nose for our energy consumption, even when we shouldn’t be!

Energy Procurement

So what can we do about ti? If we are really clever we will hire a consultant or two to help us get around it. We will hire someone that has an in-depth knowledge of energy procurement; when to buy it, who to buy it from, where and how to negotiate a better deal and who also has a vast knowledge of all the government considerations you have to take into account. Once we have done that, the pressure is off and the responsibility is no longer on our shoulders. I always believe that hiring a consultant to do the work that no one else can do is a good step in the right direction, rather than having to learn it all from scratch.
M&C Energy does Energy Consultancy Check it out

I am not really sure that you will ever be so lucky to find cheap business gas these days. I don’t really think that there is such a thing, but I do think that there are ways and means of finding the right tariff of business gas for you. You can of course look at some of the business gas comparison websites and they will soon be able to tell you whether what you are paying is a competitive price. The problem with this is that you don’t ever really get the right information for Carbon Management. The information you are looking for is not necessarily what the cost is for business gas from a variety of different suppliers, the questions that you actually want answered is how can I reduce my business gas costs and what do I have to do that.

Business Gas

The answer may well be that you start by changing suppliers, but to be honest, I have never found that a sustainable reduction in costs has been achieved that way. I have always thought that to reduce your costs effectively you have to look at all the different types of equipment you use, what you use gas for and what you use electricity for, see how they compare and see what you can do to change the times they are sued. Nothing is ever as simple as you might like it to be.
Enercon E40

The green dollar and pound is now huge businesses in themselves and there are not lots of companies such as an energy saving consultancy that will work with your company to increase their green brand perception. It might be a bit cynical to think that a lot of businesses are only going green for financial benefits rather than a real desire to make the planet a better place to live but that is probably the reality of the case.

There are also the issues of large legislative changes that are also driving many companies need to become more environmentally aware and as a consequence a lot greener at the same time. An energy saving consultancy can help with the legal requirements that are due to the Kyoto Protocol which calls for a reduction in the amount of carbon emissions that are being released by individual businesses and this is driven by large fines and taxes for those companies that do not comply to these limits. The public has driven some of these changes in companies green issues and they are more interested in the sustainability of a company and its products than ever before. An energy saving consultancy can help disclose carbon emissions for a company which can then be used to benefit the company financially as well as in green ways. An energy saving consultancy such as M&C energy group can work to disclose data on carbon emissions to initiatives such as the Carbon Disclosure Project which can influence stock markets via the Dow Jones Sustainability Index which increases the financial benefits to greener companies. An energy saving consultancy will be able to work with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol in order to identify the carbon footprint of your business as well as working to report and advice on ways to reduce carbon emissions.

Here are some FAQs that may help you in your quest to reduce your bills and your carbon footprint!

Q. Does switching lights on and off use more energy than leaving them running?

A. No. Switching on an energy saving bulb only uses the same amount of power as leaving it on for a minute or two. Turning the bulb on and off repeatedly may shorten its life, but normal household use shouldn’t cause any problems. In fact, the UK Energy Saving Trust Recommended bulbs are tested through thousand of cycles of switching.

Q. Don’t energy-saving lightbulbs take a long time to light up?

A. Yes they did, sometimes as long as two minutes; but most modern energy saving bulbs take little more than a few seconds to warm up to full brightness.

Q. Producing an energy-saving bulb must take more energy in the first place than making a standard bulb. At the end of the day, doesn’t that make it inefficient?

A. An energy saving bulb probably does indeed take more energy to make than a traditional bulb. But the energy saved by the bulb over its lifetime far outweighs this additional energy consumption in manufacture. This applies even more to LED lighting where bulbs can last for 50,000 hours, 50 times as long as incandescent bulbs

Q. Don’t traditional bulbs give a better quality of light?

A. The light quality of CFLs and LEDs does vary.  If you want a light that looks the same as a traditional bulb, buy a “warm white” or “soft white” bulb, with a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of at least 0.8.  You should find the CRI somewhere in the small print on the packaging. Explore the world of CRIs… you really can find lots of different ratings to suit your moods and needs.

Q. Lots of my lights have dimmer switches. Can I fit them with energy saving bulbs?

A. Most energy-saving bulbs aren’t fully compatible with dimmer switch circuits at the moment. However a growing range of dimmable CFLs is emerging to address this problem. There are also energy-saving bulbs that can be used with ‘staged dimming’. This requires a special sort of dimmer with three separate settings – high, low and off.

Q. Is the government really banning traditional incandescent bulbs?

A. In effect, yes. The government, energy suppliers and many major UK retailers have lead a voluntary initiative to phase out incandescent light bulbs, where there is a suitable low energy replacement. The UK voluntary phase-out is now being followed up by legal restrictions on bulb sales across Europe.

on’t CFLs contain mercury? And isn’t that bad for the environment?

A.  Wow! You’re well informed! Yes, CFL bulbs contain  tiny traces of mercury. However in the long term, they will reduce mercury pollution. This is because burning fossil fuels like coal is the biggest source of mercury in the air. Because energy saving bulbs use 80% less electricity than a traditional bulb, this means far less mercury overall.

Q. How can I recycle my energy saving light bulbs?

A. Energy-saving light bulbs are part of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) initiative. This means retailers must provide information to the public on how they can be recycled. Alternatively, contact your local authority to see whether they recycle energy saving light bulbs energy consultants.

Low energy lights work in a completely different way to traditional lighting, and this has a number of implications. Obviously, the main one is that they use less electricity to produce the same amount of light, but some of the other differences are less helpful. Here are some of the main concerns that have been raised about CFLs and LEDs, the two main types of low-energy lighting:

Q. Are they as bright?

A. If you buy the right low energy bulb, it will be just as bright as the one you’re replacing.

Q. Do they still give off a harsh light?

A. When buying any low-energy light, you have a choice about the quality of light it will produce. This is mainly to do with the colour of the light – when we buy a white light bulb we don’t actually want pure white light, and we would be disappointed if that was what we got.

Q. Can you see these lights flicker?

A. No, you can’t. Unless you’ve got a really ancient CFL that looks like an old jam jar, your CFL will be turning on and off about 50,000 times a second. This is about 1,000 times faster than the human eye can recognise.

Q. I’ve heard that if I use efficient lights, they will give out less heat and I will have to use my central heating more

A. This is actually true, but the effect is quite small. Most of the energy from lighting in UK homes does not contribute to space heating – it is either emitted at times when heat isn’t needed, or it goes straight out of the windows, or it leads to overheating and so doesn’t save fuel.

Nonetheless in all our cost and energy saving figures for lighting, the Energy Saving Trust have taken account of this “Heat Replacement Effect”. We assume that you’ll pay a little bit more for heating, at the same time as you pay a lot less for lighting.

I’ll assume that you’d like to save some energy in your home, and reduce your carbon footprint? Let’s concentrate on lighting.  So what is the low-down on energy saving lighting in the UK? Here’s a short video that explains the different types of bulbs: Light Bulbs