The Route To Net Zero – Part 2

February 28, 2026
Ashley Bullock
Energy

7 Steps To Help You Save Money And The Planet – Part 2

In my previous blog post, I shared the first three of seven steps in our action plan to help you achieve net zero. These are the steps that we’ve found to work with our clients at Nero Energy which is why I’m sharing them with you now.

So, we’ve worked through Steps 1–3, which are all about understanding your current situation. Once you know how much energy you’re using, where and when that energy is being used, and what condition your buildings are in, you can use this to create a plan that bridges the gap from where you are to where you want to be.

The next four steps are:

While net zero is the overall goal for our clients, this is a long-term goal – one that could take until 2030 or even 2040 to realise. In the meantime, our clients typically want to reduce their energy use as quickly as possible to save money and reduce their carbon footprint.

What the following four steps will do is help you start your journey as quickly as possible in order to deliver results from the outset and start making tangible progress towards your net-zero goal.

Step 4: Conducting feasibility studies

In this step, you look at all the technologies you could utilise to help you on your journey to net zero and assess the feasibility of each for your organisation and its premises. Lighting is a simple example – could you replace fluorescent lighting with LED lighting?

But can you also take this a step further and explore redesigning your lighting: for instance, are there too many lights in a particular area? Could you redesign the layout to make it more efficient? Then you use the data you gathered in Steps 1–3, about how much energy your lighting system is currently using, and draw up a comparison between your existing lighting system and your alternative options

It’s a similar story with your heating system. If you read my previous blog about the differences between ground source, air source and biomass heating, you might already have an idea of which will work best at your organisation. However, it’s important that you explore all of the options and lay them out side by side so that you can make an informed decision.

These feasibility studies will allow you to see which changes will have the greatest impact, as well as identify whether any alterations will be needed for the building itself in order to maximise energy efficiency.

For instance, if you are planning to replace an old boiler, you need to check the thermal efficiency of your building first, and you may need to improve its insulation and draughtproof around windows and doors to make an air-source heat pump a viable and effective option.

In a 15-year-old building, thermal efficiency is likely to be relatively high, and swapping a gas boiler directly for an air-source heat pump could certainly be viable. However, in a Victorian building with old pipework and radiators that have no individual control, you will likely need to replace all of the heating infrastructure, which is a much more time-consuming and costly job.

For manufacturing businesses, this stage could also include evaluating new, more energy-efficient pieces of equipment that are available, and whether you can achieve a strong return on investment by making the switch.

Step 5: Finding funding

Now that you know how much your preferred solution is going to cost to implement, you can work out how best to fund it. A business may have the capital in the bank to invest directly in a particular solution and to get started on their shift towards net zero as quickly as possible, but what if you don’t have a lump sum sitting in the bank?

If you are planning an equipment upgrade, there are various organisations that lease equipment for periods of three to seven years. This means you can start reaping the cost savings from reduced energy bills without having to find a lump sum upfront to make the change.

You can lease everything from machinery to lighting systems, and some of these schemes allow you to own the equipment at the end of the lease term. Essentially you’re taking out finance to fund the installation of these systems. The upside is that you are able to enjoy the benefits of reduced energy use straight away, which, at a time when energy bills are spiralling, is very welcome.

You need to work out not only how much this solution will cost you, but also what it will cost you if you wait two or three years until you have the funds available to pay for new equipment or energy systems upfront.

Another option if you are a public sector organisation is to explore grant funding – check out my previous blog post about the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme for more detail about how to access this kind of financial support.

There are some small pots of funding available for commercial organisations at the time of writing, and domestically there are also grants available to help with the cost of making energy efficiency improvements to your home. Do your research to find out what support, if any, you can access, and then come up with a plan to fund the remainder.

Step 6: Presenting your findings and getting buy-in

Gathering all of the information and your findings from Steps 1–6 will generally take months of hard work, possibly even a year depending on the size of your organisation. Once you have all of this data, however, your next step is presenting it to your stakeholders and getting buy-in for your proposals so that you can then execute your net-zero strategy.

Stakeholders will vary between organisations – in a school it will likely be the governors, whereas in a commercial organisation it is more likely to be the board members and potentially even shareholders. If you operate out of a rented property, it could also include the landlord.

Decisions on this scale aren’t taken in isolation and they will need to be implemented across your organisation, so the presentation stage is vital. This is when you bring everyone back together and unite them under your common goal of achieving net zero. You need to present your findings in a clear and engaging way that encourages discussion between the various people involved in making the final decision.

Remember that the plan you present is organic – it can be moved, designed and shaped as these discussions unfold. When you have all the data I’ve talked about in this and my previous blog post, you will be able to adapt the plan with the certainty that what you are changing will bring you closer to your net-zero ambition.

We typically recommend putting your findings into four main documents that cover each of the main energy systems (lighting, heating, cooling, equipment/other electrical devices), and summarising the data for each.

The aim of this presentation is to get all the decision-makers on the same page and to give everyone an opportunity to share their thoughts. You want to come away with alignment across your top team about what the plan entails, why you are doing it and how it will bring you closer to net zero.

Step 7: Delivering the projects

In reality, Step 7 is a series of many steps to deliver on your road map (which is a discussion for another blog!). In simple terms, however, this step is about delivering on whatever is agreed based on your proposals and the presentation you give to your stakeholders.

Step 7 also encompasses putting together final costings for the projects based on the proposal that is selected, creating final designs, and putting those projects out to tender (if that’s part of your organisation’s process).

We often find that there are some projects that can happen quickly – these are the low-hanging fruits like installing LED lighting, solar panels or voltage optimisation. Then there may be other projects – like replacing an entire heating system – that will take considerably longer.

However, by this stage you will be making good strides on your journey towards achieving net zero. For expert support and advice at every step of this process, get in touch with us. Book a discovery call to learn how we can support you as you work through every step of our tried-and-tested action plan for achieving net zero.