The Conundrum Facing Energy Efficiency Advisory Firms

Many energy efficiency advisory firms have between 5 to 50 staff, and in addition to energy efficiency consulting, often also provide advice around carbon measurement and reporting, and on achieving net zero emissions. 

Such firms, like many management consulting firms, have staff across 2 to 3 levels depending on size. At the bottom level are the junior consultants, often engineers with less than 5 years experience. The second level is more experienced consultants, who will act as the lead advisor. Finally there is the management level, where the founder and other senior managers sit. Generally the founder has both consulting and business management experience. 

Also similar to management consulting firms a lot of the field work is undertaken by the junior consultants. Primarily these companies based their fees on hourly rates. Overheads grow with the business, so fees are generally not that low. 

The conundrum is that, in simple terms, providing good energy efficiency advice either requires a lot of time (for junior consultants) or a lot of experience. Both of which are expensive. Smaller energy users can’t afford the advice, and thus advisory firms predominantly try to find large energy users as clients. 

But this limits the overall market size.  

Thus typically, in any given country or large city, there are relatively small number of energy efficiency companies with a small number of clients. And, unfortunately, the quality of advice can vary widely. Some advisory firms allocate junior consultants to projects, but only budget for the time it would take a senior, experienced (and thus faster) consultant to do the same work.  

Poor quality advice then provides industry reputational damage that keeps the demand for energy efficiency advice low. 

How to bypass this conundrum? To provide good advice at low cost, and grow the pie – the market –  for energy efficiency advice? 

Training is one thing that can help. 

Not just short micro-credential type training, but in depth training that develops both technical knowledge and also process skills – the ability to plan and execute the advisory services efficiently. 

The Investment Grade Energy Auditor certification has been developed with that specifically in mind. To fast track the ability of junior level (and maybe even some mid level) advisors to be able to provide good advice, efficiently. 

What do you think? How important is training? What else can grow the pie?