Reporting requirements for climate change agreements are counterproductive for energy management

Companies with climate change agreements (CCAs) are big users with a lot to gain from energy efficiency improvements, but the requirements for CCA reporting are framed in ways that tend to pull them off track when if comes to monitoring their performance and finding opportunities for energy saving. For effective waste avoidance and carbon reduction, they should adopt a very different approach. Specifically:

Firstly, their CCA assessments tend to be based on monthly cycles, because their performance is related to invoiced energy purchases. A weekly or more frequent assessment would be more appropriate.

Much of the time there is no urgency to their CCA reporting. Many are required to report to trade associations only once a quarter. An immediate performance assessment at the end of each week is the minimum if unexpected hidden losses are to be intercepted and resolved

Most report simple 'specific energy ratios' (SERs, typically energy per unit of saleable output). This is a very weak method of reporting and unsuitable for management control purposes:

• SERs vary with throughput volume, because some of the consumption is fixed overhead.
• Production is often the wrong divisor: in many industries, the weather is a significant driving factor and needs to be taken into account. Indeed in some cases it is actually the dominant factor and energy use is only weakly related to production throughput.
• SERs tell you nothing about the absolute quantities of energy saved or lost.

CCA reporting often relates to net saleable output whereas in fact energy consumption is driven by total throughput; it may even depend on where in the process the product leaves the process prematurely. Gross production output is a better indicator for management purposes; if necessary, it should be recorded by process stage

Next, CCA reports deal with site-wide consumption. Effective monitoring demands attention to individual processes and zones

CCA reports lump all energy sources together. Each utility should be monitored separately

CCA reporting has so little in common with effective management of energy consumption that it is entirely appropriate to 'shadow' it with a distinct energy targeting and monitoring scheme. Simple but powerful desktop assessment methods for routine weekly use have been available for many years.