Most Australian businesses have a wealth of data at their disposal, but how they use it is critical to optimising rising energy costs and powering their transition to net zero, writes Michele Garra, chief executive officer, Optima Technology.
Our world continues to be increasingly informed by, and run on, data. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our energy use. As we navigate the challenges of an uncertain and volatile energy market, it has never been more critical for organisations to control how they use and manage their energy.
With many Australian organisations at different points on their pathways to net zero emissions, organisations should prioritise creating clarity from their data complexity to truly harness its power and accelerate their transition to net zero.
Sustainability: Transforming ambition into action
Data plays an increasingly pivotal role in business decision-making on sustainability, enabling organisations to monitor their progress and transform ambition into meaningful action.
Energy data is also fundamental to net-zero reporting, allowing organisations to develop strategies that create a more sustainable business. However, with the abundance of data available across multiple sources, organising it into a single source of truth can be a resource-intensive effort.
As a result, many businesses rely on manual extraction and spreadsheets – methods prone to error – to extract the data needed to report on their sustainability progress. Last year, Engie Impact found only 18 per cent of organisations have a single source of data “truth” when measuring their sustainability data, with only three per cent having confidence in the data reported.
Organisations should look to adopt automated and accurate data solutions that provide near real-time visibility of their energy use to protect themselves against spiralling energy costs, and meaningfully track their progress towards net zero.
If organisations are to optimise their energy usage and spending, the accuracy and integrity of this data is critical. From prices, to units on the meter, organisations can use this data to inform and manage every aspect of their energy from source to use, and in near real-time.
Why review your net-zero data infrequently when it could be accessed and interrogated by your teams daily, giving your organisation actionable and granular insights, and confidence in usage and spending?
By improving data accuracy, businesses can see the rises and falls in their energy consumption, enabling real action to control their energy spending in the short-term and ensuring significant savings to their bottom lines in the long run.
Data accuracy and organisational accountability
With stakeholder demand for corporate environmental action set to increase as we progress to increasingly ambitious sustainability targets, data accuracy will be critical for organisational accountability. A recent survey from PwC found nearly 50 per cent of investors are willing to divest from companies that don’t take sufficient action on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
With recent policy directives from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) signalling harsher crackdowns on greenwashing, the act of reporting inaccurate or incomplete data could have serious financial, legal and reputational consequences for ill-prepared organisations.
Accurate data is crucial to transparently adhere to high regulatory standards of accuracy and any future disclosure requirements that may come into force between now and 2050.
Despite the pervasive focus on net zero, many businesses are currently focused on the dynamic changes in utility costs. Skyrocketing energy prices present a genuine concern as companies begin to feel the pinch of an increasingly unstable energy market. However, data can be a powerful tool to alleviate this pressure.
Through the monitoring of energy data, organisations can more easily target the areas where consumption is inefficient and improve their buying power. Not only is this beneficial for our climate and the push towards net zero, it protects organisations from energy market volatility.
Software that simplifies data collection can empower businesses with more accurate data. This is a vital part of baselining carbon emissions, enabling companies to understand their starting point, set meaningful decarbonisation targets, measure their progress, and gain a clear picture as close to real-time as possible. It enables those companies to confidently take action to reduce their emissions in a targeted manner.
Recent advancements in software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology have also made it easier and more affordable to harness accurate and automated data management and reporting, allowing for the simple collation of data from myriad sources into one system, and validating it, providing a reliable up-to-date single source of truth.
Businesses can make more informed decisions when aided by reliable data from a single source. Supplied with in-depth and contextual data, business leaders can design a robust sustainability strategy and accurately report their results to stakeholders.
Relative to manual data collection methods, this represents a cost-effective and reliable way for companies to operate, saving significant time and effort while protecting themselves against the uncertainties of today’s energy market and moving closer to a net-zero economy.