Energy Resilience Assessment

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= An Energy Resilience Assessment will help any business or organisation to calibrate its vulnerability to energy shocks and disruption. It translates energy security issues and resilience into language business can understand, based on its own financial data.

Description

"Energy Resilience Assessment (ERA) is a tool developed by Transition Training and Consulting (TTandC) for use with businesses and organisations. It is based on the observation that in a time of rising and volatile energy prices, a business’s reliance on fossil fuels, especially liquid fuels, comprises a key vulnerability to that business.

An ERA examines, among other things, the use of fossil fuels in transportation and power; where raw materials in the supply chain are vulnerable to the oil price (e.g. plastics and other petroleum-based products); and how customers’ behaviour may change in a high energy cost environment. It identifies where a business has the greatest exposure to rising or fluctuating energy prices, quantifies this risk and highlights potential mitigation strategies. This analysis and information are vital for assessing the assumptions that underpin any business model and strategic plan. Energy prices and availability potentially affect every aspect of an organisation so this is a valuable tool for all decision makers. An ERA can make a clear, hard business case for reducing direct and indirect energy use, for becoming better connected to the local economy, and for thinking laterally about how the business might look in a lower-carbon, more localised context." (http://transitionnetwork.org/patterns/outreach/energy-resilience-assessment)


Example

Rob Hopskins:

"For example, one ERA carried out by TTandC for a National Trust property calculated the likely impact of rising oil prices on visitor-related revenues, given 94% of visitors drove private cars an average round-trip of 66 miles. To offset this potential drop in visitor income, a number of new commercial opportunities were identified. These included the creation of a number of on-site enterprises, that the property become a food producer, offer training to local people, and start producing building materials onsite, both for maintaining its own buildings onsite, and also for local builders. Often the results of its analyses can be surprising. I remember an early assessment done for a printing business. One would have assumed that the main vulnerability was the fact that the business kept its presses running 24 hours a day, which must have been very energy intensive. In fact, the ERA revealed that a key vulnerability was the fact that all but one of the staff lived at least 7 miles from the business, due to the high house prices in the town which meant that none of the staff could afford to live there. The lack of affordable housing was revealed as adding to the oil vulnerability of the business (and the town). As a result, they began an apprenticeship scheme for local young people, in order to bring more of them into the business." (http://transitionnetwork.org/patterns/outreach/energy-resilience-assessment)


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