CIET's Ask Us Anything series is a free monthly Q&A session with industry experts.
In our Strategic Energy Management (SEM) Ask Us Anything session, we dove into the world of SEM with three experts who brought insights from their roles with a local distribution company, a consulting firm, and an organization that has successfully implemented an SEM plan.
In this Ask Us Anything highlight, two of our experts weigh in on the risks of implementing certain energy management strategies and how organizations can be aware of those risks.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Jay: When I think about Strategic Energy Management (SEM), we're talking about the management structure and not necessarily the technologies, it's relatively low risk in terms of starting to pay more attention and starting to integrate through your organization. I think the biggest risk we see with it is starting those efforts, getting people working within your organization, and then having them fall off and not having that consistent commitment. We've seen it happen. It comes and goes. The next time you try to start up those efforts again, it becomes that much harder because everyone thinks, oh you're just asking me to put in some more time to this and nothing happened last time.
Making sure that you're focusing on the consistency, you're celebrating those successes, and you keep building that momentum on the SEM side is one of the big risk mitigation things an organization can do.
Jeff: I got to see a cohort of almost 24 go through it, and I was just looking back through our post-pilot update. We had a lot of Energy Champions cycle out. It was almost half of them. So it's important to build the team quickly so if someone chooses another job somewhere else, you can maintain that momentum.
We had executive sponsors change out. It was almost 50% of the Champions and almost 25% of the sponsors who changed out over 24 participants. That's a huge changeover. So the risk is that you don't get to follow through with it if you leave it in one person's domain. It needs to be shared goals across an organization and someone needs to be able to step into the role of a leader.
That's where we had lots of disruption and, in some cases, really had to start a little bit over again. Our regrets were that we didn't get some of this stuff in place sooner so they could maintain their momentum with whatever it was they were choosing to do.
Strategic Energy Management 101 (SEM 101) is a 2-day course that serves to emphasize an organization’s energy management strategy, assessing its capacity, and addressing gaps in planning, financial resource allocations, and communication. Plus, it focuses on identifying and prioritizing energy efficiency initiatives, developing energy efficiency projects, and reporting on progress.
Read more about what you can learn from this course and find an upcoming session.
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