Any business worth its salt needs to conserve costs wherever possible and sometimes the most obvious solutions are overlooked. Energy prices are set to rise and making a few adjustments to reduce your energy consumption can reduce your energy bills by 10 % - 20%.

Before you begin any project in the office you need to ensure staff engagement, get everyone involved and give people tasks and action plans no matter how simple, the key to successes is awareness. Always praise positive behaviour and encourage staff contributions on ways to conserve energy.

Here are out top 5 tips to reducing your company’s energy bills:

1. Shut it down at the end of the day & on weekends, ensure that all photo copiers, printers’ computers and lights are shut off before the last person leaves. Sometimes it’s difficult to co-ordinate this so you can invest in timer switches to turn off lights and movement detectors in bathrooms, laminate on every pod reminding staff to shut down PC’s before leaving, and designate a staff member to be the energy champion charging them with the office shut down.

2. Invest in energy efficient equipment, there will be a higher upfront cost for this as with most green products however you will re coop this with lower annual running costs over the life time of the equipment. When you’re upgrading your desktops why not replace them with a laptop, they are more efficient to run than their desktop counterparts. LCD monitors are more energy efficient than older cathode-ray tube monitors.

3. Install energy efficient light bulbs throughout your office. Do you have florescent bulbs throughout your office? If you have a lot of natural light and too much artificial light remove one of the tubes from the florescent fittings.

4. Heating & Cooling bills will be a big drain on your budget, aim to have your heating around 20 degrees in winter and 24 degrees in summer. If your staff feel this is to extreme simply reducing your thermostat in winter by 1 degrees or increasing by 1 degree in summer can reduce your heating & cooling bills by 8%.

5. Air leakage will contribute to higher heating and cooling bills, during the cooler months close doors to areas that are warmer and during the cooler months close doors to areas that are warmer. Up to 75% of heat loss is caused from doors not being closed. Keep windows closed and ensure that they are sealed correctly. Fit draught excluders along doors to prevent drafts coming in.

Lowering your businesses energy consumption is not only good for your bottom line but great for the environment too. Start your energy conservation plan today and watch those energy bills reduce.

Julie Moore director of Save Energy Save Money