11. Develop action plans

The purpose of this section is to translate all your other preparatory/planning work into action plans for the coming period, typically one year. These plans will form the basis of your energy saving activities. Please note that action plans are not entirely lists of technical investment projects and will include housekeeping, management and organizational activities.

The action plan is the specific action that will be taken to improve energy performance. Actions in this context are those activities that you are going to complete in the coming period.

With the action plans you should verify the actual savings made on completion of an action and reassess or check for further opportunities or improvements. The level of effort required to verify actual savings will vary with the value and complexity of the savings opportunity. Verification of savings can often be complex in that you need to separate the effects of the energy drivers from those of the saving itself.

Prioritization criteria for action plan items:

  • Legal requirement
  • Low  risk, low cost
  • High profile item that might raise awareness of the programme, e.g. lighting even if it is not a SEU.
  • Other items that will affect decisions include stakeholder resistance, technical capability, targets, ease of implementation, etc.