Whether you own your own business or are responsible for monitoring expenses in a large corporation, you know it is important to cut costs without sacrificing quality. When searching for ways to lower expenses, a frequently overlooked area is utility expenditures. Of course, there is no way to eliminate utility bills completely, but there are many easy ways to decrease energy costs.

Energy-Efficient Products

When beginning your quest for energy efficiency, one of the easiest things to start with is replacing incandescent light bulbs with new, energy-efficient LEDs (short for Light Emitting Diode) or CFLs (short for Compact Fluorescent Light). These bulbs can produce the same illumination, measured in something called lumens, like an incandescent bulb with about four to six times less wattage. For example, a 40-watt incandescent bulb can produce 450 lumens. It would only take a 9-watt CFL or a 5-10-watt LED to produce the same lumens.

Does your company use air conditioning, refrigeration, or industrial washers and dryers? An energy-efficient dryer, to take just one of these, should be able to dry a load for approximately 80% of the watts of a conventional dryer. A 20% decrease might not sound like much at first, but it really adds up over time.

Consider an Energy Audit

An energy audit is a thorough inspection of existing facilities and utilities to determine where energy is being lost or wasted. Once inefficiencies are identified, a plan to remedy them can be undertaken.

Are there deficiencies in your roofing or insulation that aren’t apparent to the naked eye? Your heat or air conditioning could be leaking into the great outdoors without you even knowing it. It takes special equipment to detect areas where energy is being lost.

In addition to lowering costs, in the long run, an energy audit can help your business become more environmentally friendly. In this age of increased awareness of one’s environmental impact, more customers are looking for companies that match their environmental values.

Investment Now Equals Savings Later

This all sounds great. After all, who wouldn’t want to be more efficient and environmentally conscious? All the same, you may be wondering about the costs of new, energy-efficient products, or repairs to roofing or insulation. It is true that there will be an initial cost to make the needed changes, but they will soon pay for themselves.

An LED bulb, for example, can burn for up to 50,000 hours – that’s 25 times longer than a traditional incandescent bulb. In addition to the obvious savings in terms of less frequent bulb replacement, LED bulbs use less electricity to produce the same illumination (as mentioned earlier) so there are savings in your electricity bill as well.

Finding the Company That Best Fits Your Energy Needs

There are many energy companies out there to choose from. The research needed to find the best match for your company can be a bit daunting. Should your energy contract include a fixed or variable rate? Is an early termination fee included in your contract? If you want to switch energy providers, will the cost to do so be worth it in the long run?

These are all important questions when it comes to your company’s bottom line. Energy Professionals’ trained personnel can answer these questions. They will do the legwork to find you the best energy contract. Energy Professionals stays up-to-date on the ever-changing environmental regulations and can help your company stay compliant.

Time spent finding ways to be more energy efficient will pay off in the long run. The sooner you switch to an energy-saving plan, the sooner you will see the savings roll in.