Is Your Organisation Overpaying for Energy?

Signals to look for

• Energy bills are based on estimated reads rather than actual consumption data.
• You cannot identify which sites, buildings, or assets are the largest consumers without requesting a report from a third party.
• Consumption anomalies - such as overnight or weekend spikes - go undetected for weeks or months.
• Metering infrastructure has not been audited or updated in the last three years.
• Your energy team cannot produce a consumption breakdown by site or asset on demand.

Signals to look for

• Your energy broker is paid a commission by the supplier rather than a fixed fee by your organisation.
• You received fewer than three comparable quotes before the contract was signed.
• The same broker has renewed your contract more than once without a formal tender process.
• You do not know the unit rate margin your broker earns on your contract.
• The procurement process was managed entirely by the supplier or broker, with no independent review.

Signals to look for

• The ESOS deadline was flagged by an external party rather than identified internally.
• Your last ESOS audit was treated as a compliance exercise with no follow-through on the recommendations.
• You are unsure whether your organisation qualifies for the current ESOS phase.
• Responsibility for ESOS compliance sits with no single named owner internally.
• Audit findings from the previous phase have not been reviewed against capital planning decisions.

Signals to look for

• Energy data used in the SECR report was compiled manually from invoices rather than from metered records.
• The report has not been reviewed by anyone with independent knowledge of the underlying data.
• Scope 1 and Scope 2 figures cannot be reconciled back to site-level consumption records.
• The intensity ratio used in the report was chosen for convenience rather than relevance to your business model.
• Last year's SECR submission required significant corrections after the initial draft.

Signals to look for

• Projects with a payback period of under five years have been declined or deferred due to capital constraints.
• There is no standard financial model used to assess energy efficiency investments across the organisation.
• Efficiency project proposals sit with facilities or operations teams but are rarely escalated to finance with a business case.
• Your organisation has not explored off-balance-sheet or third-party finance options for energy projects.
• The same projects have appeared on the efficiency pipeline for more than two consecutive years without progressing.

Signals to look for

• A net zero target has been announced publicly but there is no internal document describing how it will be achieved.
• No one in the organisation has formal accountability for delivering against the net zero commitment.
• The plan does not include specific capital investments, procurement changes, or operational measures with timelines.
• Progress against the net zero target is not reported to the board on a regular basis.
• The target date has been set without a baseline assessment of current emissions or a gap analysis.

Signals to look for

• Your broker's fee structure has not been disclosed to you in writing.
• You have not asked your current advisor to confirm in writing that they receive no supplier-side commission.
• The same party that advised on procurement also manages your supplier relationship.
• Contract renewal recommendations consistently favour the same supplier or a small group of suppliers.
• You have no way to verify independently whether the contract terms you accepted were competitive at the time.

Signals to look for

• Energy data is held separately by individual site managers or regional teams with no central consolidation.
• You cannot produce a single view of total energy spend across the organisation without a manual collation exercise.
• Performance comparisons between similar sites are not carried out routinely.
• Anomalies at individual sites are identified by the supplier or on invoice review rather than through active monitoring.
• Your organisation has acquired or disposed of sites in the last two years and the energy portfolio has not been formally reviewed since.

Signals to look for

• You do not know your energy cost per square metre or per unit of output relative to sector peers.
• No external benchmarking exercise has been carried out since the last significant change to your estate or operations.
• Budget decisions for energy are based on prior-year spend rather than an assessment of what efficient performance looks like.
• Your energy team cannot say with confidence whether current consumption is high, average, or low for your building type.
• Benchmarking has been discussed but not actioned because the data required was considered too difficult to compile.

Signals to look for

• Procurement, compliance, project delivery, and sustainability reporting are managed by different teams with no formal coordination.
• Energy decisions escalated to the Finance Director arrive without a coherent recommendation or supporting analysis.
• There have been instances where procurement decisions and efficiency project plans have worked against each other.
• No one in the organisation has a complete picture of total energy spend, commitments, and obligations at any given time.
• External advisors are engaged separately by different internal teams, sometimes with overlapping or conflicting briefs.