Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency built around your business.
Reduce Energy Consumption. Control Operating Costs.
Energy efficiency isn’t only about changing the way your business operates just for the sake of using less energy. It’s about identifying practical opportunities to reduce consumption, control operating costs, and improve the performance of your facilities.
Understand Energy Use
Identify operational patterns that drive energy consumption and uncover practical opportunities for savings.
Identify Opportunities
Eliminate unnecessary energy use without compromising the way your business operates.
Evaluate the Return
Select improvements with a compelling ROI by using your energy data to determine which changes will be most impactful.
On This Page
Why It Matters
Where To Start
Finding Waste
What to Improve
Cost and ROI
Measuring Results
We Can Help You
FAQs
WHY ENERGY EFFICIENCY MATTERS
Energy Costs Are Part of a Bigger Business Challenge
Across the board, businesses are facing higher costs for the goods and services they need to operate. Labor, materials, insurance, transportation, technology, and other operating expenses all compete for the same budget. Energy is only one part of that pressure and it can be particularly difficult to manage because the energy market can fluctuate significantly.
Energy Cost Pressure
Energy prices have become extremely volatile, making forecasting operating costs difficult. The impact can affect many aspects of a company’s operations.
Commercial sector average electricity prices increased from $0.1059/kWh in 2020 to $0.1341/kWh in 2025. (1)
PJM RTO prices spiked over three base residual auctions from $28.92/MW-day for DY24/25 to $329.17/MW-day for DY26-27. (2)
Annual average commercial delivered natural gas prices grew from $7.48/Mcf in 2020 to $10.97/Mcf in 2025. (3)
The impact is significant. Businesses are managing financial pressure from a wide range of escalating operating expenses all competing for the same budget. Of all business costs, only health insurance has risen more sharply than energy costs. The increases have led to When it comes to energy, it can be easy to dismiss the expense as an uncontrollable part of the cost of doing business.
Commercial Energy Efficiency: Mitigating Risk, Boosting Margin
Energy efficiency is often associated with sustainability initiatives, but its value goes well beyond that. It’s about understanding where improvements make financial and operational sense and prioritizing the steps that can deliver a worthwhile return.
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Getting Started
Where Do I Start?
Knowing that energy efficiency is worth exploring is one thing. Deciding what to do about it is another.
You may have already researched potential improvements, identified equipment that could be more efficient, and calculated costs. But moving from idea to action means weighing competing priorities, available capital, operational demands, expected savings, potential implementation challenges, and the time required to manage the project.
And sometimes, even when a business finds it beneficial, energy efficiency projects may be dismissed over concerns there’s not enough time or expertise to make it happen.
But with the right plan in place, neither time or budget needs to be sacrificed.
Start With the Questions That Matter
The right starting point depends on your facility, goals, budget, and the measures you’ve already implemented. Since everyone has a different starting point, here are some of the questions we hear most often.
What's working already?
Audit current infrastructure. Document which utility programs, efficiency projects, or vendor relationships are already active across your facilities to establish an operational baseline.
Low-hanging fruit?
Target immediate ROIs. Pinpoint simple operational adjustments, lighting retrofits, or insulation fixes that slash immediate waste without requiring massive capital expenses.
What's non-negotiable?
Map requirements. Define compliance mandates, carbon reduction goals, and corporate sustainability benchmarks that your strategy must satisfy.
Which variables matter?
Analyze consumption drivers. Evaluate how your production cycles, weather shifts, facility footprints, or occupancy habits directly cause your energy demand spikes.
Is measurement a must?
Yes! Establish a data baseline. Determine exactly how you will examine use and cost trends and verify savings. Utility invoice management software and submetering reveals ROI and help reduce waste.
Efficiency success looks like...?
Define financial targets and grade your performance. Set concrete, measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) for your project, from simple payback periods and avoided costs to total carbon reduction.
Ready to dive deeper into these components of sound energy efficiency planning?
Exploring your facility’s data is just the first step. Below, we break down where commercial and industrial utility waste commonly hides, how to evaluate potential projects, and one way to prove your return on investment.
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Finding Waste
STOP BLEEDING MARGIN TO INVISIBLE OPERATIONAL INEFFICIENCIES.
Where Energy Waste Hides
Energy waste is rarely a single, glaring problem. Rather, it’s an accumulation of several factors hiding in plain sight such as equipment running long past the end of the workday, outdated equipment, or maintenance schedules that don’t change with the business..
Target Areas for Energy Efficiency Measures
| Category | Challenge Area | Common Causes of Energy Waste |
|---|---|---|
| Lighting and Automation Controls | Facility Illumination | Outdated or inefficient lighting fixtures/bulbs, lights burned continuously, failed occupancy sensors, not making good use of daylighting, and skipping regular maintenance. |
| Building Envelope | Thermal Barrier and Structural Seals | Unsealed gaps around windows and doors, inadequate or aging insulation, worn roofing, degraded sealant joints, and incomplete or missing air barrier. |
| HVAC and Building Systems | Thermal Management and Ventilation | Running HVAC continuously (no smart thermometer or building controls), old units, oversized rooftop units, clogged air filters, and blocked interior vents. |
| Production and Process | Operations and Specialized Equipment | Leaving equipment (not in use) plugged in and drawing phantom power, energizing all equipment at the same time (contributing to costly peak loads), lack of strategy to reduce use and cost, and not analyzing consumption trends. |
| Motors, Pumps, and Compressed Air | Mechanical and Pneumatic Equipment | Line leaks, motors running at maximum capacity even when demand is low, deteriorated mechanical parts such as worn impellers, seal friction, and internal wear rings, and unmanaged compressed air leaks. |
| Refrigeration and Water Heating | Thermal Load and Process Water | Dust and grease buildup on evaporator and condenser coils, worn door seals, refrigerant leaks, failing fan motors, uninsulated piping, tank scale buildup. |
Effective Energy Efficiency Relies on Custom Calibration
Your specific energy efficiency plan should reflect how your facility operates, your consumption data, and details such as industry specific equipment – not a generic checklist of upgrades.
Be it a commercial office building, a multi-site medical complex, school district facilities, or a heavy manufacturing plant, each one has a unique energy load profile. Even similar facilities operating within the same industry and geographic region face different variables.
If you’re working to control energy waste in your business, simple conservation is a low-cost starting point that can help shape your organization’s energy consumption habits. As you begin to isolate troublespots, establishing the best energy efficiency plan for your business will account for your goals and budget and be guided by your energy data.
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Getting Started
ESTABLISH A BASELINE
Benchmark Your Energy Use and Cost for a Successful Energy Efficiency Program
It’s a question we hear frequently. How do we plan and assess a beneficial energy efficiency program? The answer can be found, in part, in your energy invoices. The information there provides a solid foundation for efficiency planning as well as an effective means of measuring you company’s progress.
With it, you can answer questions such as how much are you using? When? Where? At what cost? How does current use compare with past performance or similar facilities? Where is usage higher than expected? When examined this way, usage that’s higher than it should be stands out quickly.
For larger or more complex facilities, whole-building utility data may not be enough. Submetering provides a way to isolate equipment or areas that may be contributing to waste.
Utility Data Management: Alternative Energy Source’s platform pools your bills into one place so your use and cost data can be displayed in a dashboard that reduces the time it takes to establish a baseline, plan efficiencies, measure success, and develop the reports most relevant to your business. Learn more about Utility Data Management.
Sources and Notes
(1) Electricity: Not energy-only, includes other cost components. From U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3. U.S. commercial-sector annual average retail electricity prices, 2020–2025.
(2) PJM capacity: PJM Interconnection, Base Residual Auction results. RTO-wide clearing prices shown in $/MW-day; actual customer impacts vary by location and billing arrangement. From https://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations/rpm.aspx
(3) Natural gas: U.S. EIA, commercial-sector annual average delivered natural gas prices, 2020–2025 . Actual prices vary by location, contract, usage, and delivery arrangements. From https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_a_EPG0_PCS_DMcf_a.htm