Nazia Afreen, Sustainability, ESG & Net Zero Consultant www.eic.co.uk
Many organisations have completed much of the initial work supporting their Net Zero ambitions. Carbon footprints have been calculated, targets established and energy audits undertaken, providing a clearer understanding of the measures available to reduce emissions.
These commonly include LED lighting, solar PV, heat pumps, building management system improvements, fleet electrification and supplier engagement. Individual recommendations may be technically credible, yet remain disconnected from available capital, asset replacement cycles, operational requirements, grid capacity and wider organisational priorities.
A comprehensive roadmap should establish priorities, identify dependencies and set out a practical sequence for investment. It should assign responsibility, define the route to approval and explain how performance will be measured. Without this structure, organisations can be left with an extensive list of opportunities and no clear process for turning them into decisions.
Establishing the Right Investment Priorities
Simple payback remains widely used when assessing energy and carbon reduction projects. It provides a straightforward indication of how quickly expenditure may be recovered, but can favour smaller measures offering an immediate return over projects capable of delivering greater long-term value.
A three-year LED lighting project may appear more attractive than a heating or electrical infrastructure project with a seven or ten-year payback. The latter may address an ageing asset, reduce maintenance expenditure, improve operational resilience, enable future electrification and deliver a considerably larger carbon reduction over its working life.
Where an asset is approaching the end of its useful life, the investment case should reflect the expenditure that would have been incurred through its eventual replacement. Retaining it also carries costs associated with maintenance, energy consumption, reliability and operational risk. Assessing the full lifecycle brings decarbonisation into established capital and asset-management processes, rather than treating each project as a standalone sustainability initiative.
Understanding Sequence and Dependencies
The order in which projects are delivered can materially affect their cost, scale and performance.
Heat electrification provides a useful example. Replacing gas-fired heating with heat pumps may support a substantial reduction in Scope 1 emissions, although moving directly to equipment selection can result in an oversized, expensive or operationally unsuitable solution.
An effective feasibility assessment should consider heat demand, operating hours, controls, fabric performance, plant condition, flow temperatures and electrical capacity. Improvements to controls or building fabric may reduce demand sufficiently to change the capacity of the proposed heat pump, together with its capital cost and infrastructure requirements.
Wider plans for the site must also be considered. EV charging, battery storage, electric process equipment and future production growth may all place additional demands upon the same electrical infrastructure. Examining these projects separately can lead to duplicated work, avoidable expenditure or capacity being allocated without sufficient regard for future requirements.
A credible roadmap should provide a coordinated view of the estate and its likely development over the next five, ten or fifteen years. Establishing dependencies at the outset allows investment to be planned in the correct sequence and prevents current decisions from restricting future options.
Creating a Reliable Baseline
Organisations may have access to half-hourly consumption data, utility invoices, building management systems, sub-metering and carbon reporting platforms. Its value depends upon whether it provides a reliable account of current performance and the factors influencing consumption.
A reported reduction in energy use does not necessarily demonstrate that an intervention has delivered the expected result. Production may have fallen, occupancy may have changed or the building may be operating for fewer hours. Consumption may also increase following an efficiency project because operating hours or output have grown.
A robust baseline should account for variables that materially affect performance, including weather, occupancy, production levels and operating hours. Establishing this position before investment allows expected savings to be modelled consistently and provides an agreed method for measuring performance following completion. Where the baseline is poorly defined, comparisons become less reliable, forecast savings are harder to substantiate and the organisation may struggle to demonstrate the anticipated outcomes.
Connecting Sustainability with Organisational Decision-Making
Responsibility for Net Zero targets often sits with sustainability teams, whilst many decisions required to achieve them are taken elsewhere. Procurement influences supplier selection and Scope 3 emissions. Estates and engineering teams manage assets. Finance controls capital allocation. Operations determines how buildings and processes are used, while senior leadership establishes investment priorities.
A deliverable roadmap should reflect this distribution of responsibility. Each project requires a named owner, an agreed route through technical and financial approval, clarity over the source of capital and appropriate measures for monitoring performance.
Closing the gap between ambition and action requires a structured investment programme based upon whole-life value, reliable baseline data, clear dependencies and shared accountability. Developed on this basis, the roadmap provides a practical route from technical opportunity to funded delivery, supported by defined responsibilities and measurable financial, operational and carbon outcomes.
About the Author
Nazia Afreen is a Net Zero & Sustainability Consultant within Sustainable Innovation at EIC Partnership, supporting organisations with carbon management, decarbonisation strategy and Net Zero delivery. Her work focuses on developing practical, evidence-based programmes that align environmental objectives with operational requirements, asset planning and investment priorities.
This article appeared in the September 2026 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.
