EDF unveils energy efficiency guide

EDF Energy has this week launched a free best practice guide designed to show firms the steps they can take to improve their energy efficiency without making major new investments.

The Energy Efficiency Toolkit offers practical advice on how firms can help instigate behavioural change and encourage staff to reduce their energy consumption at work. EDF estimates firms can reduce their energy needs by up to 20 percent through no or low investment initiatives.

Shayne Rees, marketing and communications manager at EDF's major business division, said firms were increasingly interested in improving their energy efficiency for both cost and environmental reasons but were often at a loss over what steps to take.

"Typically some poor executive is tasked with saving energy, but they are often unclear on where to start," he said. "There is a lot of good advice out there, but there is so much it can be very confusing, so we've condensed the best of that advice into a toolkit for anyone designing and implementing an energy saving programme."

The CD-Rom based guide is divided into five sections covering the lifecycle of an energy saving initiative.

The first section covers how firms should measure and analyse their current energy consumption and includes a number of spreadsheet templates that firms can use to assess their performance. The second section then offers insight on how to analyse the results and detect where changes need to be made.

The third section then provides advice on how to put together a low cost energy saving plan and again provides templates to help when presenting the strategy to the rest of the business. "The aim is to provide a vanilla or generic argument for adopting such a strategy which users can then adapt to their own organization," said Rees. "Having a template will take 80 percent of the work out of the process."

The fourth section provides advice on how to implement staff communication programmes and how best to ensure behaviour changes. It also includes templates for internal marketing and communication material such as posters that firms can use to promote their energy saving policies.

The toolkit ends with a section of best practice advice on how to monitor the success of energy saving programmes.

Rees said the toolkit was freely available to all EDF Energy business customers. You can register for the guide here and find more information on saving energy in the workplace here.