Planning

This is the process of understanding one's culture, energy profile, risk tolerance and available resources so as to design an energy strategy that achieves the company's objectives. Client interviews and baseline reviews are the instrumental tools. Critical to success is cross-functional communication between departments such as engineering, finance, purchasing and the executive function. This component also includes monitoring and reporting to ensure actions taken to achieve the desired results.

Preventing

The lowest cost unit of energy is the one that is not used, followed closely by the one that is re-used. Tools used in avoiding energy usage are load management, demand response programs, process evaluations, and energy audits. EnerVantage also includes the use of renewable energy and recycling programs in this category as well.

Producing

In this category are the production of gas and electricity that can be obtained at a lower cost than through purchasing from the utility or competitive market. Tools used here include landfill gas utilization or anaerobic digestion for natural gas. For electricity, co-generation and use of back-up generation for demand avoidance represent production opportunities.

Purchasing

A very wide range of tools that for electricity or natural gas include portfolio development, tariff analysis, competitive shopping, supply chain analysis or direct wholesale market participation. Knowledge of physical supply chains as well as market intelligence are critical to minimizing energy costs.

Protecting

This component includes the host of financial risk management tools for hedging, but also includes developing a reasonable budget expectation based on industry fundamentals and facility resources. It also includes asset ownership to ensure reliability. Tools such as storage and pipeline capacity for natural gas and redundant transformers and back-up generation for electricity are valuable to keep operations running and may be used to offset ongoing costs as well.