Energy increases become the ‘new’ normal

This article was inspired by David Loveday from LG Energy Group, The Director of Trading and Operations.

Last night, whilst working on my favourite past time of promoting the messages of energy management through my ‘Podcast’ “Energy Speaks Back”, I had the privilege of interviewing David. ?We had previously become associates through LinkedIn and had often commented on each other’s work.

During my interview with David, the predictable conversations came to the surface regarding the global energy crisis and although we were actually discussing the key issues surrounding the UK today, they were however, affected by global criteria’s.

One of the shocking observations from David, which I have been thinking about, is that organisations have very quickly adopted these price increases and have very quickly come to see them as the ‘new normal’.?I was personally hoping that now the energy prices have risen in the region of 250%, we will now start to see organisations reaching for their ‘yellow pages’ and seeking Energy Experts to drive down their costs.

“We know, what we would consider normal, although it is amazing how people have kind of adapted to the current market, these are high prices and how accepting people are now in the market, it's ￡100 a megawatt hour when, you know, it was ￡50 a megawatt was the norm before. It is amazing how it?just rebased itself based on these high prices.” David Commented during our Podcast.

This explained a lot, as I had previously written a document around the crisis that would support organisations manage their 3rd largest expense (currently, possibly their 1st largest expense) but had had very little take up. The problem really begins here as we have an energy crisis, but organisations are simply ‘accepting the rising costs.

The human race doesn’t take long to adapt to changes and I’m just the same. After moving into a new 2 bedroom apartment, which is smaller than my previous 3 bedroom house, I was initially paying the same costs for my energy as in my previous house and it’s not taken long for me to accept this . I have however, reprogrammed my heating and hot water and have started to control my lighting with additional LED replacements. It won’t take me very long to address the price increase with a small investment in money, a focus on my timers and general strategy review. These simple steps will address my increase.

We all need energy to run our homes and businesses, and it won’t be long before we are also having to engage with charging our cars as well. ?I remember the days when my dad was saying “petrol is now ￡1 per gallon”, as this was a significant landmark, but today it has far exceeded this rate and we have once again become accepting of these increases . Do we do less miles? Do we try and drive more efficiently?.... the simple answer is no.

These energy price increases within the UK is not a new thing, we have seen energy prices continue to climb since the market opened in the 90’s and the trend has always been seen to increase. This time however, with the cumulation of so many different things such as weather, pandemic, economics, carbon trading and accidents, the increases have been unprecedented. This is probably?one of the most widely used words this decade.

Organisations need to take a very hard look at this and this needs to become the number one talking point during the board meetings. If this doesn’t become number one, then future talking points are going to be prices increases, building closures and staff restructuring.

During our meeting, David pointed out that the cheapest kWh was the one we didn’t use and for me that was music to my ears. We discussed that a really good opportunity would be to dig out past energy proposals that were written over the last 5 years but were never actually taken up which show a payback of 2 years but could now even drop to well under a year.

I always like to build in solutions to my articles and to really target the solution in order to address the problem and avoid the implications. The approach is always the same, focus on review, realign, reduce and report, but this time add ‘revisit’ and apply todays and future energy prices to previous energy proposals and watch the return on investment significantly increase.

Call to Action …

Contact the last energy expert you engaged with to do some further energy assessments. Review the recommended proposals they previously presented and re-calculate the proposals. All worthy proposals will be presented as:

If you enjoyed reading this article or want to provide feedback, please contact Paul Webb at www.b2benergy.co.uk or send him a direct message. He will respond within 24 Hours. This has been

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