A “surprising” number of businesses know little about how much energy they use, a senior business chief at international metering firm Elster has told ELN.

Frank Hyldmar, Elster’s Executive Vice President for Electricity International (pictured) said this is despite the potential for firms to make “double digit savings” when they pay attention to their energy use.

Mr Hyldmar told ELN in an interview: “You’d be surprised when you look at companies and how little they know about their energy consumption. There’s a very big UK supermarket we work with – one of the biggest – and after putting meters in their cooling departments and bakeries, for example, the supermarket found double digit savings on their energy consumption.”

This was because the supermarket was able to compare bakeries in different branches and if it saw one was using more energy than another, it was then able to make changes to its energy use.

This is one reason why the EU is trying to bring in changes to the energy industry like those seen in the telecoms sector over the last decade, said Mr Hyldmar, who is also Vice-President of the European Smart Metering Industry Group (ESMIG), an EU committee.

Whereas up to a couple of years ago, it was unknown what calls cost, “Now we have detailed bills, we know exactly what we’re spending per call. That’s exactly what the EU is trying to do – get the same information as on a telephone bill,” he said.