Energy Use Consulting - Boom Industry

Written by Patrick Dixon

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Whatever we do needs to be planned carefully and properly monitored.

What it is

Explosive growth of consultancy firms offering specialist advice on energy saving / compliance

Why it matters

Few of the energy savings or products listed on this website will happen without specialist advisors helping identify opportunities, reduce risks and develop new products or services in a profitable way.

Difference it makes

We can expect a large number of failed business enterprises, all trying to make money out of the global carbon boom. Many of these will founder because of lack of technical expertise. Other projects will survive but in a relatively inefficient way because they were unable to keep up with the pace of change, not only in technology, but also in regulation, taxation and public perception. Technical consultants will be critical to success.

Case study: Johnson Controls are specialists in energy saving for large office buildings and estimate that most older office blocks waste up to 40% of their energy each year because their temperature controls need to be more sophisticated. They typically offer companies a free energy audit and free installation of new control systems, paying themselves their own costs (plus profit) out of the energy savings they create over the first three to four years.

Challenges

This will be a very crowded market – yet it will also be rare to find management consultants with deep experience and a broad perspective. As in every other area of consulting, expect wide range of skills, experience and size of energy consultancies. Those with strong reputations and specialist skills will do best. Expect every large consulting firm to expand their energy consulting practice rapidly.

Expect a very small number of large energy consultancies to win most large government and business contracts. Companies will find it hard to cover all aspects of what is needed – for example it is easy (relatively) to buy in expertise to build a biofuel factory, but perhaps more important is to have an accurate view of what the actual demand will be in five year’s time if government policies move away from converting food to fuel.

Business Opportunity

Expect 5% of all expenditure on reducing carbon use to be spent on advisors, technical consultants, energy auditors, regulatory compliance and related services. That’s a potential market of £20bn a year globally - 3% of total annual spending of up to $2 trillion.

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