theartofservice

At some point, your company will have to look at their energy consumption. Maybe they already have and have already started some initiatives. If you’re in position to influence the direction, you may want to look at some different approaches to future energy management. One thing that will influence any corporate strategy is the global energy outlook. Recently, the Global Business Network (GBN) and the EPA worked with several companies to identify how this outlook may impact their business. Out of this venture came four plausible “roads.”

For IT companies, planning for all four roads may become necessary to understand current and future needs in energy management. Each has challenges, short term and long term benefits and costs. By understanding and planning for these four roads, a company can have a comprehensive outlook on the decisions they have to make in the context of becoming sustainable now and in the future.

“The Same Road” - Within this outlook, no significant change is made in the current direction of the world or the company with regards to energy or environmental concerns. Some changes may be made, but for the most part, the future will be plagues with higher energy bills and reduced natural resources with nothing in place to truly protect the company.

“The Long Road” - A significant change in the economic, geopolitical and energy landscape occurs. Some experts may state that companies our on this road with the current economic climate and the challenges of the this road are readily apparent. It speaks to the fact that changes to the global landscape may have an adverse impact on the efforts of companies real or imagined, making the path to becoming sustainable more difficult. Some concerns are government regulation, depletion of natural resources, Budget restrictions and the like. Strategically, this direction considers all the potential risks to initiate a green effort.

“The Broken Road” - The worst case scenario, this road proposes what may happen if a significant global event takes place. Maybe the event impact your company directly or one of your customers or a supplier. In any case, the company is in the midst of an immediate and significant change to normal operations in the form of a loss of energy or a need for increased energy. Consider this an event, attack, or threat that causes a service disruption as small as a brownout or as large as a complete disaster event to recover from.

“The Fast Road” - This approach focuses on making reasonable decisions with the necessary investment resources to implement improvements to energy consumption and environmentally conscious initiatives that are made early to make a difference today. Consider this the best scenario possible? How much would it take to implement all of these projects now with the intent to have a greater ROI than if implementation waited.

All outlooks above imply that a need for energy management is required because of declining resources and rising costs. The difference in the approaches apply to a company’s access to those resources. For strategic steps suggested by the GBN and EPA, read Part two of this article.