Are you always justifying an investment in an Energy Conservation Opportunity (ECO) for 100% with their savings on the energy bill? May I ask you: are many of your proposals turned down?
I learnt in a course of a training company for energy efficiency consultants in the USA that there is many times a much completer way to justify an ECO and get it approved in more cases. It is by looking for other benefits, which improve the survival chances of the ECO. Let me show you quickly an example.
Take an office with an energy bill of $40 per square metre per year. Now take the payroll costs per square metre per year. With 10 m2 per employee this might be $4000, 100x the energy cost. Now comes the trick. If you can at the same time save energy and increase comfort with four example a better air treatment system, you save on both the energy and the staff costs, IF the employees increase productivity with the better comfort. If this productivity increase is only six minutes per day or 1% of a workday, just the staff cost savings per m2 are already as big as the whole energy cost! Because $4000 x 1% = $40. That’s an example of a zero energy office!
Note that not all collateral benefits can be expressed in money but they will improve your business anyway!