Firms fail in energy, CloudApps finds

Despite all the hype about “sustainability,” too many companies still don’t get it. Insulating business against the growing limits on energy, resources and carbon emissions isn’t a feel-good exercise or simple PR strategy: it’s smart and cost-effective insurance in an era of uncertainty.

And that’s where corporations are falling down left and right.

For example, nearly half of US and UK business employees polled a couple of years ago said they typically don’t power down their office computers upon leaving work for the day. The survey by computing energy management provider 1E and the Alliance to Save Energy concluded that bad habit was costing US companies alone $2.8 billion a year in wasted energy costs.

Another energy management company, CloudApps, finds in a new survey that a large number of employees are frustrated by their companies’ lack of initiative on reducing costs, waste and consumption. In that study, 48 per cent of those polled said they hadn’t participated in any company effort to boost sustainability in the previous year. And a full 44 per cent said they would consider leaving their jobs if they believed their employers weren’t operating sustainably … a pretty astounding figure, considering the current hiring landscape.

“The study results detail a shocking void between what organisations say and what they do,” says Simon Wheeldon, CloudApps’ CEO.

Findings like these indicate businesses aren’t yet taking to heart smart energy and resource management policies. Even the industries that say they are often don’t measure up: Kelsey L. Schamber, a student at Purdue University, recently phoned 100 call centres for utility companies with smart-grid initiatives to ask six simple questions about their smart metering and smart grid efforts. Among the answers she received: “We have nothing like that technology” and “No one knows where to send you, what is the smart grid?”

Any way you look at it, these types of surveys show businesses aren’t being smart. And that’s not just dumb, but dangerous.

As a report from Lloyd’s and Chatham House last year warned, “Businesses which prepare for and take advantage of the new energy reality will prosper — failure to do so could be catastrophic.”