As facilities managers, there’s an extensive list of things that come under your responsibility.  

Right now, the obvious priority for you is to make your day-to-day operations as efficient as possible. Whether it’s speeding up process times, increasing client satisfaction or reducing your outgoings, you are responsible to deliver on creating sustainable environments for both your business and your clients to continually flourish in.  

An Effective Solution to Wasted Energy 

With widespread price increases, every business across the country has been searching for new ways to rapidly minimise their energy consumption, to reap the long-term benefits of reducing expenses, whilst also becoming more sustainable.  

Spending less on energy will provide you with more financial means to expand your business and further increase your profitability. It's a short list for sure, but an important one to act on as we try to navigate our way through the midst of inflation and global economic stagnation. Luckily, we’ve prepared a short list of ways to identify inefficiencies within your operations and make reductions quickly. 

Well, if you prioritise things that seem trivial, like reducing your energy outgoings, then the bigger challenges ahead should start to look a lot less daunting. The scale of wasted energy that is consumed within your facilities may look small, but they add up quickly, creating further financial pressure to your business, as higher prices have become the new normal.  

Over the last year, the price of utilities has inflated, and remains expensive. Only a small number of businesses were eligible for some form of government support through the Energy Bill Support Scheme. The scheme ended in March 2023, leaving all businesses stuck in the same boat, trying to find a quick and effective method to reduce the cost of their operations. 

As energy is contributing to the carbonisation of our atmosphere, meaning that invisible emissions are being released right under your nose, contributing to your emissions. The longer you wait to take action over them, the longer you are effectively throwing away money that could be used for better things across your operations.  

Formulating a plan and acting upon this can be difficult, with no obvious sign of where these emissions are coming from – or how much they are adding up to (with exception of smart meters - they will happily show you the difference in £££’s). 

Identifying Your Energy Phantoms 

Currently, 25% of businesses have admitted to leaving their appliances on standby overnight, according to Brita. This is in comparison to 72% of businesses who currently have obligations and targets in place to lower their energy consumption, in line with 2030 net zero targets – to reduce emissions by 65% against 1990 levels. 

Once you visualise the true scale of wasted energy in your facilities, it starts to make sense why you should be driven in making reductions. Invisible emissions, better known as phantom loads, refers to the amount of energy that is being wasted through your equipment when not in use. As these periods of inactivity have earned a nickname, it must be serious enough – and you should act! 

When we talk about phantom loads – we're finding those devices that may look as if they’re switched off. Office spaces are a prime example, including computers, phones and even TVs – that could remain on standby. Phantom loads go beyond devices powered by the mains, think of things like lights and central heating could also be contributing towards these emissions if not properly dealt with at the end of each workday or week. 

Have a look below at some of the appliances that could be racking up your bills!

Understanding your facilities 

To understand where you should be making cutbacks, it's essential to make note of anything that require gas or electric that doesn’t get switched off automatically. 

This means you will need to consider what your facilities have, and where cutbacks can be made. There is certainly going to be areas in your business where vast amounts of energy are being used without you having considered them. For example, what about the canteen? Cleaning facilities? You have an on-site gym? If applicable, these types of facilities will be consuming your energy in vast amounts, so you need to find the correct energy reduction solution. 

There will be exceptions to this. Certain aspects of your facilities will need to be kept switched on overnight; burglar alarms or security cameras, for instance. Certain facilities management companies such as asset management or capital project planning may need certain pieces of equipment running 24/7 such as data storage units, as they will hold critical pieces of data. Beyond this, there are no exceptions for continuing to keep your entire facilities on standby, when nobody’s conducting business. 

Formulating a solid layout of your operations will help you find what’s likely to be in use, and when. 

Dealing with your Phantom Loads 

Sure, you could delegate these tasks to members of staff, which could mean spending up to an extra half an hour each day to ensure that these devices are being switched off properly out-of-hours (including weekends and bank holidays). However, this is time consuming, difficult to enforce and leaves a gap for potential human errors or dishonesty.  

To work around this, you could formulate an effective strategy by installing a smart energy monitoring solution to accurately work towards achieving your goals, as utility readings can be compared, day by day. 

By using the recorded data, you can track your overall energy consumption by room, or area. This allows you to quickly root out the culprits when you’re alerted that your consumption is way above usual. 

Monitoring your facilities also enables you to take sufficient action in reaching your carbon reduction targets, as finding these phantom loads can give you an insight into the biggest feeders of your energy, so you can switch them off properly and see the savings in kilowatt hours (kWh). 

The True Scale of Cost 

Phantom loads, invisible emissions – whatever you want to call them, they are serious hoarders of your energy, which ultimately means your money.  

This means making your facilities as efficient as possible will be a top priority. But if it’s not already, you haven’t considered estimating the actual cost it’s having on your facilities’ cashflow. 

To try and estimate the sheer cost of this issue, we can use data to apply against our own facilities: 

It is currently estimated that a grand total of £9 billion could be saved across just homes in the UK if invisible emissions were dealt with, according to The Loop.  

If we compare the average consumption of an SME in the UK (15,000 - 25,000 kWh of electricity and 15,000 - 30,000 kWh of gas per year) against the average home, (2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas) this indicates that businesses could be making up to £54 billion worth of savings on just electricity alone, which is much more expensive than gas, per unit. 

Take this figure into the context of your businesses’ energy use, how much do you think you could end up saving from adopting proactive measures across your facilities? 

Invisible Systems to cut your Invisible emissions 

Now you’ve understood the problem, you need to find an effective solution, and as soon as you can! 

Firstly, you need to figure out how to collect all this information as accurately as possible. A pencil and paper won’t do it, sadly. By monitoring each area in your facilities, you gain a full oversight of your consumption, providing exact results to find where the phantom loads are coming from across your facilities. 

For example, take an average, small-sized office space.  

You’re talking 20-50 computers, printers, and telephones, over an area of 150-350m2, that requires lighting for 8 hours a day. You might also have TVs, regular central heating, a kitchen area, and a few meeting rooms. You could find that most of the devices and systems in the office are being left turned on throughout the entirety of the week. Manually checking these are all switched off is not time-effective, nor will it accurately collect and store consumption levels within your facilities.  

Using smart monitoring systems such as our Environmental sensor gives you an accurate insight into your energy usage. This will help you find any wasteful practices, alerting you of any spikes and peaks in your consumption, making these patterns much easier to spot and prevent. 

These systems also allow you to compare your consumption against temperature levels, which could also give you a wider insight into where these invisible emissions are originating. For example, your electricity use is still high, but the room is cold? Someone could be opening windows when the radiators are in use. Understanding these patterns will help you build an effective reduction strategy, by cutting costs and increasing your overall sustainability. 

Did we mention? It also monitors CO2 levels. If anyone is getting brain fog and forgetting to switch off their devices, it could be showing poor air quality from excessive carbon dioxide levels! Finding these poor practices will only help you begin your journey of de-haunting your office once and for all. Combining different sensors such as energy use, temperatures and CO2 levels can truly give you a 360-degree view of your facilities, providing you with the right information as to where you may be able to make immediate changes to your staff’s day-to-day patterns and reach for those low-hanging fruits.  

The environmental monitor works to supply information tailored to the needs of your organisation and supply the data needed to make the best decisions for your facilities. Why not request a demo so we can help you hunt down those energy phantoms in your business?