How Sustainable Energy Consultants Can Help Businesses Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

However, due to the demands of running a business, many companies don’t have the time to develop a strategy to help lower their carbon footprint. More savvy companies are turning to sustainable energy consultants to help them achieve their sustainability goals.

In this blog post, we’ll look at the benefits of carbon footprint reduction for businesses and how sustainable energy consultants can help.

What Is a Carbon Footprint?

A carbon footprint (calculated in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)) refers to the sum of all greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by someone’s or, in this context, a business’s activities. Carbon footprint reduction aims to lower your direct or indirect contributions to these emissions.

Who Are Sustainable Energy Consultants?

Sustainable energy consultants are the highly trained experts businesses turn to when they need help with managing, reducing, or measuring their carbon emissions. Working with these consultants is the surest way to increase the chances of your business becoming more environmentally conscious. When you stick to their strategies and guidance, your business can reduce its direct and indirect contributions toward global warming and damage to our immediate environment.

Benefits of Working With Sustainable Energy Consultants to Reduce Carbon Footprint

Some of the main advantages of working with sustainable energy consultants to lower your carbon footprint include the following.

You Can Improve Your Brand Reputation

Customers and stakeholders are more environmentally conscious than ever. Everywhere you look, people are talking about how they can stop contributing to global warming.

Your business can boost its reputation if you show that you are taking action to reduce your carbon footprint and contributing to the fight for a more eco-friendly world. Therefore, it’s no surprise that more businesses are openly advertising everything they do to make the world greener.

You Can Avoid Penalties for Breaking Regulations

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has regulations for greenhouse gas emissions for businesses in different sectors. Reducing your carbon footprint is a sure way to balance emissions and avoid falling short of the limits for your industry. Unfortunately, many businesses operate without knowing what these limits are in the first place.

You Can Save Money 

You might be surprised by just how much money you can save by reducing energy consumption or reliance on traditional energy sources. When your company’s operations are no longer too dependent on fossil fuels, you’ll become a lot more immune to the volatile nature of energy prices.

How Sustainable Energy Consultants Help Businesses Lower Their Carbon Footprint

Sustainable energy consultants help businesses lower their carbon footprint in the following ways.

Evaluation of Carbon Footprint

As a business owner, you can’t lower your carbon footprint if you don’t know how many tons of carbon emissions you’re generating in the first place.

Sustainable energy consultants will measure the amount of greenhouse gas emissions your business produces directly and indirectly. Therefore, they’ll consider transportation, waste, production, supply chain, energy use, and more.

Design and Implementation of a Carbon Reduction Strategy

With a clear picture of a company’s emissions data, sustainable energy consultants can see opportunities for carbon footprint reduction. They can design and implement strategies that will bring visible changes to the company’s emissions total.

Some of the things you can expect to find in a carbon footprint reduction strategy include the following.

Application of the Three Rs

The three Rs are reduction, reusing, and recycling. Sustainable energy consultants can help businesses explore ways to apply these Rs across their business at every level. Learning what to reuse, recycle, or reduce can significantly reduce your carbon footprint. It can also help improve your bottom line.

Adopting Renewable Energy

The rise in the number of green energy providers on the market today means it’s now easier to completely or partially switch to renewable energy sources. The sustainable energy consultants can draft and execute a plan for migration to renewable energy solutions covering everything from what segments to migrate to the green energy vendors that offer the best conditions.

Switching to Sustainable Web or Cloud Services

Many businesses looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint often do not think about the carbon emissions due to their usage of hosting services. If you’re using cloud hosting solutions, you must consider how much fossil fuel goes into keeping your files safe and accessible.

Sustainable energy consultants will work with you to ensure you’re using providers that are taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint. These providers draw energy from renewable sources, use energy-saving appliances, and have plans to ensure high energy efficiency.

Adopting Greener Travel Alternatives

Travel is responsible for a huge chunk of carbon emissions in most companies. However, it’s one thing most businesses can’t do away with. Employees have to commute to work daily. Executives may travel out of state or internationally for meetings.

Sustainable energy consultants can implement a strategy that will reduce emissions significantly by:

• Looking for low-emission business travel alternatives
• Building a database of greener hotels at business travel destinations
• Drawing up incentives for employees to use public transportation when possible

Switching to Sustainable Suppliers

Sustainable energy consultants can help your company reduce its carbon footprint by helping you reevaluate the supply chain. By switching to only sustainable suppliers for your finished or raw materials, you can reduce your contribution toward rising levels of emissions.

Unsustainable suppliers are huge contributors to higher levels of GHGs around the globe. Counting to work with them means funding their practices.

The energy consultants have a database of suppliers with low carbon emissions data. They can also find those with the ISO 14001 certification, which signifies that the company is measuring its environmental impact and taking steps to improve it.

Adoption of Energy-Efficient Lighting

LED bulbs use up to 90% less energy than incandescent units. Switching out all the lightbulbs in your business premises is a strategy to lower your carbon footprint that you may have overlooked.

A sustainable energy consultant can help put a number on the energy savings for your business if you complete this switch and what it means for your carbon footprint.

Offsetting Carbon Emissions

Offsetting carbon emissions is an effective and affordable approach for your business to complement efforts at carbon footprint reduction.

Sustainable energy consultants can help your company find and purchase carbon offset credits to compensate for your emissions. This entails investing in approved projects, ranging from renewable energy developments to reforestation drives. The consultants will help you choose initiatives that match your budget and your carbon footprint reduction targets.

Keep in mind that carbon offset schemes must be a part of the entire sustainability plan. They cannot be the only strategy for any company that wants to make a lasting, positive environmental impact.

Use of Energy-Efficient Appliances 

The sustainable energy consultant’s carbon footprint audit will show you how much energy your lower-efficiency appliances consume daily. Changing them can help lower your emissions. Some of the key things a consultant will recommend here include:

• Installation of energy-efficient HVAC systems
• Use of programmable thermostats for better control over your heating and cooling
• Use of office electronics (such as printers, computers, scanners, and TV screens) that have earned the Energy Star certification
• Installation of low-flow water fixtures
• Installation of efficient hot water systems like solar-powered or tankless units

Implementing Changes to Avoid Heat Loss and Gain

The amount of energy you need to heat and cool your building will drop significantly if you improve the insulation around walls, ceilings, and floors. The sustainable energy consultant will discuss your building’s R-values and places that need more attention.

Monitoring and Reporting Your Carbon Footprint Metrics

A renewable energy consultant will monitor the numbers to ensure your carbon footprint reduction drive is yielding the desired results. By tracking progress, it will be easier to make adjustments to the overall strategy where necessary.

Capacity Building

Businesses with a sustainability culture ingrained in employees and executives will find reaching their carbon footprint reduction goals easier. It will be easier for everyone to buy into inconvenient parts of the strategy.

An energy consulting firm can use coaching, training, and other forms of support to push the entire company toward sustainability expertise.

Sustainable Energy Consultations With Navigate Power

Working with sustainable energy consultants is a surefire way for businesses to enjoy cost savings and benefit from an enhanced reputation. Most importantly, it’s a great way to contribute toward making the world a better place for us all.

At Navigate Power, we are proud to be the top choice for businesses looking for sustainable energy consultants. Our consulting team excels at delivering custom strategies that will lead to measurable results.

Are you looking to improve upon an existing sustainability plan? Maybe you’re looking to create one for the first time. Our highly experienced professionals can help.

Contact Navigate Power today through our online form or by phone at (888) 601-1789 to find out how your company can reach its carbon footprint reduction goals.