Forbes.com recently published a very interesting essay that was written by Nick Main and Joseph Stanislaw. In the article, the authors correctly note that every company must be energy-conscious in order to achieve maximum profitability.

 “Energy consumes a significant portion of an enterprise’s spending, accounting for 5-20 percent of a typical company’s costs. Yet, many organizations have a poor understanding of their energy consumption and how to reduce it. Their unawareness of how they consume energy is analogous to an individual paying for a grocery cart full of food at the supermarket, but without knowing what is in the cart or how much any individual item in the cart costs…..There’s no reason for companies to wait a decade – or even a year – to move towards an energy strategy.”

Until a company acknowledges that energy consummation is a reducible expense, it will continue to unnecessarily expend resources that it could be using elsewhere.

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When considering ways to create a more energy efficient work environment, lighting upgrades can be a smart, cost-effective solution that also reduces your company’s carbon footprint without substantial capital investment. Over the past three decades, the lighting industry has seen great advancements. Lighting engineers and designers have been able to improve the overall quality of indoor lighting with lumen output and improved color rendering, while simultaneously achieving an average of 25-40% energy savings in each advancement phase.

For example, next generation indoor fluorescent lamps, such as T8 and T5, offer substantial energy-savings over the older T12 models. With the improvements in microchip technology, light emitting diode (LED) products are also finding their way into indoor lighting systems. LEDs present many advantages over incandescent light sources including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime and greater durability.

Companies with older facilities have recognized this and are turning to lighting upgrades or “retrofit projects” as an economical way to save energy, improve the overall working environment and reduce operating costs. Also, many energy providers are offering rebates and incentives to companies who upgrade to efficient building lighting, thereby reducing the initial project capital investment.

The good news is that these lighting upgrade projects can generally be conducted around the normally scheduled work hours of the facilities. By conducting the initial lighting audit and performing the upgrade project during non-business hours, there is little or no disruption to the operation.

Now may be the right time to make a modest investment to make a long term impact on your bottom line.

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