In line with the UK Governments spending cuts, DEFRA has announced significant cuts and structural reform to its largest non‐quango body, The Environment Agency. DEFRA believes radical reform is required in order to make the Environment Agency leaner with greater levels of efficiency, whilst it also provides an end to any potential policy‐making and lobbying activities. MORE ABOUT THE DOWNSIZING EFFECT

Are you using a domestic energy profile for your business? If so, there are considerable tax and insurance implications for your business. This article examines why these profiles exist, how to find out if you are using the wrong profile, what to do to change this and how a change would benefit the security of your future contracts.

Background

The original intention of all profiles was to structure pricing and consumption patterns to match the type of electricity usage. Simplistically 01 and 02 profile meters are intended for domestic properties whereas the commercial market starts off with 03 and 04 profiles, which are at the smaller end of business consumers and are typically ‘billed’ quarterly. 05 to 08 profiles inclusive are larger business consumers, billed monthly. There are still particular meters which might have upto 7 different rates based on time of day.The final profile the 00 or ‘half-hourly’ (the meter sends out via a radio signal, a reading every half hour). These are typically high use businesses. continue

Smart Metering is in the news today and the BBC have produced an overview of how a smart meter works in addition to their discussion on how much you can save with a smart meter. Whilst these refer to the domestic market, there is significant relevance for the business market also.

It’s a familiar story; if you can’t measure it or see it, it can be hard to do anything about it. It seems unlikely that energy prices will reduce over time, and this combined with the focus on Carbon Reduction Commitment for all, should make this a very real issue for most businesses.

Empirical research suggests that simply monitoring consumption, improves awareness and typically consumption will fall. Thus at the most basic level smart metering will help. What Smart metering will do above and beyond the basics for business is provide, up to date accurate information about their consumption.
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Energy Benchmarking is the latest buzzword in the world of energy management, carbon emissions and conservation. We are finding that increasing numbers of new and existing clients are questioning how and where they can save energy. This is where the Carbon Trust can assist. The Carbon Trust was set up by the UK Government in 2001 and is an independant company created to “accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by working with organisations to reduce carbon emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies.”

It might be worth spending some time using their Benchmarking Tool For Office Buildings – here you can make an assessment of how much energy you use in your office spaces and compare this with benchmarks produced for 4 different office types as part of the very detailed ECON 19 publication. This enables the user to flag up any potential need for change and improvement in efficient use of energy.