Why is there no debate about best practices in energy? If you haven’t read our last blog, Energy Efficiency & Carbon Reduction: The Truth About Industry Standards, it provides valuable background. A quick Google search of Best Practices In Energy will return a long list of results. You will find that these so called “best practices” are aimed exclusively at the point of energy use, otherwise known as the demand side. (otherwise known as stuff you can buy).
Not-So-Best Practices
Practicegreenhealth.org says best practices consist of “reducing equipment energy use; Upgrading the building envelope by improving insulation…”
Similarly, energy.gov says best practices in energy consist of “upgrading building systems, lighting, and materials – Installing solar and wind energy systems, putting a bioomass boiler into service…”
The search results reveal a consensus that best practices in energy are about your building, your equipment, your renewable installations, etc… So it looks like people are talking about best practices in energy; but all of them are wrong. Here’s why:
Energy is a commodity, a resource. Energy doesn’t just show up in your outlets. It doesn’t materialize out of thin air to power your equipment. Energy is produced. It has a market with a supply side, where its generated, regulated, and delivered, and a demand side where its purchased and consumed. If you run a business you know that markets are complex. You know that it is folly to focus exclusively on the demand side of your market while ignoring the supply side. You don’t have to know a thing about the energy market to understand that “best practices” that only consider the demand side are not best practices at all.
So before you invest in any kind of energy improvement project, determine if the proposed solution seems product-first. And then talk to Tactical Energy Group. Before you purchase, before you sign off on engineering, before you design the project, before you do anything, talk to TEG.
Real Best Practices In Energy: The TEG Model
If you decide, “we will not do a little better with energy, we will do the very best we possibly can on energy cost, usage, and waste”, then you must use first principals thinking. You must start with the supply side.
Tier 01: Leverages the supply side to reduce costs without any investment. Provides TEG with essential utility data and an opportunity to understand your operations first-hand. This understanding is the essential foundation to energy projects you may choose in the future.
Tier 02: With an in depth understanding of your business operations, and access to your historical utility data, TEG identifies low-cost investments, uniquely suited to produce outsized cost savings in your facilities. Tier 2 relies on the foundational discoveries of Tier 1.
Tier 03: TEG helps you select, organize and implement your largest energy saving investments. Not only do Tiers 1 & 2 provide energy savings to help fund these items, but TEG’s mature knowledge of your operation and data allows for project design with reduced cost, enhanced cost-saving performance, and fully maximized effect.
Why are we focusing so heavily on cost saving opportunities? Because that’s where best practices in energy actually begin. You cannot decouple usage, or efficiency, or carbon from cost. Usage, cost, and carbon are always interacting. The supply side and the demand side are always interacting. They cannot be separated.
Our framework works systematically from the supply side to the demand side in every one of your buildings. It squeezes out cost-free savings through proper data collection and research. Our framework then uses the knowledge and the savings to select and fund low cost, high-impact investments. This process yields outstanding project design for high ticket, demand side initiatives. TEG’s best practices framework reduces expenses, improves returns, and maximizes effects.
Today’s energy efficiency and renewable products are amazing! We have nothing against them. But the product isn’t the best place to start; the product is the last step. Following real best practices you start with a strategy, end with a product and a project that funds itself
