Step 3. Develop your energy information and plans

3.1 Identify legal and other requirements

Many organisations have externally imposed requirements concerning their energy use. These will include local and national laws and corporate or customer requirements. In order to manage your energy effectively you need to be aware of these requirements and to ensure that you comply with them.

3.2 Acquire and analyse energy data

The purpose of this step is to establish your energy use and trends in consumption. Ideally the past 3 years of energy bills would be used to establish these trends but a minimum of 2 years is required. One useful method is to develop annualised trends of energy use. You will also need to be aware of current energy sources and how much energy you expect to use in the coming period.

3.3 Determine significant energy uses

The purpose of this step is to establish where most of the organization’s energy is being consumed. Once you know which are your most significant energy uses (i.e. processes, systems, equipment, etc,), you will focus most of your efforts on those uses. This will particularly include personnel who influence energy consumption of those uses. You will also focus attention on uses with significant potential to improve, these are areas which may not be your largest consumers but which have high potential for saving energy.

3.4 Quantify the effects of relevant variables on energy consumption

The energy consumption of all organisations is affected by different activities to different extents. Two typical significant driversare discussed in this guide but specific circumstances may require the investigation of others. The two driversconsidered here are production activity and weather, which experience has shown to be the most common drivers. Drivers are those activities and/or factors which cause a change in energy consumption, e.g. in colder weather we normally consume more heat energy than in warmer weather.

3.5 Establish energy baselines and performance indicators

Energy baseline

The purpose of the energy baseline is to develop a starting point for measuring energy performance improvements.  This can be a very complex subject but in this guide we are trying to simplify the process.

3.6 Identify opportunities for improvement

You will need to develop a list of all energy saving opportunities or ideas. It is important to realise that this list is a live database and will increase in size on an ongoing basis. It is the main continuous improvement tool in the EnMS. In this Guide the term Energy Savings Opportunities (ESO) List is used for this purpose. 

In an effective EnMS new ideas will be generated routinely and processed to improve energy performance. 

3.7 Identify people who may have a significant impact on energy consumption

There are a number of people in all organisations who have a significant impact on your energy use. These people need to be identified and their level of training or competence evaluated to ensure that they understand their role and the influence they have on energy use.

3.8 Establish energy targets

Objectives

In setting objectives you consider what you have learned about your energy use, its relevant variables and the potential opportunities you have identified during the earlier steps of planning. Objectives tend to be long term and less specific than targets. An example of an objective might be to train all your utility operators in the energy aspects of their roles over the next two years. Another would be to improve the efficiency of your steam system by 10% over the next 3 years.

Targets

Targets should be SMART as described below.

3.9 Develop action plans

The purpose of this section is to translate all your other preparatory/planning work into action plans for the coming period, typically one year. These plans will form the basis of your energy saving activities. Please note that action plans do not only have lists of technical investment projects but will include low cost, management and organisational activities.

 The action plan is the specific action that will be taken to improve energy performance. Actions in this context are those activities that you are going to complete in the coming period.