Investing in Energy Efficiency: The 10% Rule [Infographic]

Are you an energy manager that has recently been tasked to invest in energy efficiency measures, but has no idea how much they will cost?

Does your existing energy management project need a financial boost that you don’t know how to estimate?

Or perhaps you are one of the 62% of companies citing lack of access to finance & capital as their biggest barrier to implementing energy-saving upgrades? (If you don’t even know where to begin looking for money, check this previous post on funding resources for energy efficiency projects).

How to Ballpark Your Energy Efficiency Costs

At Dexma, we are firm believers in the 10% Rule for Energy Efficiency. To understand it, let’s take a real example from one of our clients. Jo Burns manages a mid-sized supermarket chain with retail locations across the UK.

Jo’s trying to figure out how much of her budget she should invest in energy efficiency. She knows that her supermarket chain spends roughly £50,000 per month on energy bills. This represents a total annual energy cost of £600,000.

If Jo wants to save more money on energy, she can use The 10% Rule to estimate the total project cost of an energy management initiative. Using this rule, her energy efficiency investment should be equivalent to 10% of her annual spending on energy (£60,000), or at least one monthly energy bill (£50,000).

The 10% Rule Explained

Are you still confused or shaking your head in disbelief?
We created this neat infographic that breaks it down for you: