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Shifting the Corporate Perspective on Energy: A Service, Not a Commodity

Shifting the Corporate Perspective on Energy: A Service, Not a Commodity

Full Title: Shifting the Corporate Perspective on Energy: A Service, Not a Commodity
Author(s): Greentech Media, Edison Energy
Publisher(s):
Publication Date: December 1, 2016
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):

Learning to view and treat energy as a service, rather than as a commodity, is a shift that warrants C-suite-level attention and a new enterprise-wide strategy. A growing number of Fortune 500 companies are making strategic decisions in favor of renewable energy and energy efficiency. This proves that lowering energy costs and carbon footprint is good for business while providing a competitive advantage. Technology and service choice are becoming very important in energy markets, particularly with the largest energy users in the commercial, industrial and institutional sectors. This is leading large organizations to take a closer look at their energy costs, and to capitalize on emerging options for controlling this significant expenditure. Along the way, they discover that becoming more strategic about energy allows them to not merely cut costs, but also meet sustainability goals and enhance their overall business performance and their brands. Within most large organizations, energy is handled primarily as a cost — specifically, as a line item in the facility operations budget. For Fortune 500 organizations, energy often is their second or third largest operating expense, sometimes totaling hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The good news is that this cost is, to a large extent, quite controllable. Also, opportunities are growing for companies to earn substantial returns, and even to realize new revenue streams, through strategic investments in energy. These things become possible when companies shift how they think about managing energy. A new business and organizational model, Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) is helping many large companies fundamentally change their relationship with energy through changing how they procure and manage energy. These companies have gained competitive advantage by adopting the view that energy is a service, not a commodity. This mindset shift enables companies to take a comprehensive, enterprise-wide view of energy, encompassing both supply and demand, to develop strategic approaches that achieve their goals.

This paper addresses five issues:
1. The current strategic value of energy to large organizations.
2. What EaaS is, and how it can work.
3. Obstacles to realizing full benefi ts from the energy market.
4. Best practices supported by the EaaS model.
5. Steps on the path to EaaS.

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