How ISO14001 helps reduce energy consumption

Section 6 of the ISO 14001 deals with “planning ” an environmental aspect to be controlled and reduced. For most medium to large size organisations, nominating energy consumption as environmental objective is a reasonable and realistic goal due to the nature of its impact. Plus, not monitoring energy consumption can be a very costly process for any size organisation.

Reducing energy bills can be done by both online and offline strategies. The following strategies that we recommend are cost effective and compliant with ISO 140001. These include:

Use signs

Keeping everyone accountable for their energy use is a key part of the ISO14001 certification.

Having visual cues around the workplace can help remind employees to do simple tasks such as remembering to switch off the lights at the end of the day or switching lights of when rooms are not in use. This is a traditional but effective way to reduce energy costs and consumption.

Designate an energy official

Assigning someone the role of looking after all energy aspects of the business can give your employees a point of contact if they need assistance on reducing energy costs in their department. Having a designated energy official is also great for ongoing energy saving education for employees. This official might also track and monitor your energy usage for the ISO14001 certification.

Use smart technology and connected products

Technological solutions are a great tool to have when saving energy. This can range from having remote temperature controls and sensor lights, to an energy management system. Our energy management system of choice is the Smappee. It is great because it can connect to several different devices and updates data regularly, at minute intervals. It is beneficial to have a smart energy management system that can connect to your other technological products, because then it saves time analysing data. Plus, you then get a clearer picture of your total energy use!

Energy Efficiency Benefits

Aside from increasing your competitive advantage and improving your bottom line, improving your energy efficiency also has a number of other benefits. These include but are not limited to:

✅ Diversifying utility resource portfolios and can be a hedge against uncertainty around pricing

✅ Lowering overall electricity demand will reduce the need to invest in new electricity generation and transmission infrastructures

✅ Lower greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollutants

✅ Decrease in water use

✅ Reduced demand will stabilise electricity prices

✅ Earn incremental returns on energy efficiency investments

✅ Increased productivity of energy being used; less energy is required to provide an energy service