Milly Camley, CEO, Institute for Turnaround
Business leaders facing the UK’s energy crisis often feel powerless. Couple sky-high industrial energy prices, the highest in the industrialised world, with continuing inflationary challenges and it’s easy to see why.
Yet our 2025 Societal Impact Report reveals something important: whilst 76% of Institute for Turnaround members anticipate increased demand, often driven by cost pressures including energy, the businesses seeking help aren’t those resigned to failure. They’re organisations determined to control what they can control.
This distinction matters. You cannot control wider trends like global energy markets, however, you can control how your business responds to them.
Assess your Options
For businesses with appropriate circumstances, microgeneration can be an effective solution. For others, the capital investment doesn’t justify the returns.
As part of broader operational turnaround strategies equipment upgrades can deliver multiple benefits: reduced energy costs, improved productivity, lower maintenance expenses and enhanced competitiveness. But timing and financing matter enormously. Replacing everything at once may be financially impossible. Replacing nothing could leave you increasingly uncompetitive.
The approach that works involves prioritising equipment based on energy consumption, operational criticality and available capital. Which upgrades deliver the greatest impact? Which can be financed without compromising short-term stability?
This requires balancing immediate pressures against long-term positioning—exactly the kind of decision-making where turnaround expertise proves valuable. Many businesses remain on energy contracts that no longer serve them well. Procurement strategies that made sense five years ago are often no longer applicable. What contracts are suitable depend on a company’s risk tolerance and cash flow position and often require specialist advice.
We would encourage looking at supply options, investment and procurement to feature as part of a broader operational transformation that can develop the organisation’s capacity to manage challenges and shocks across both energy but also all areas of its business.
Plan for Multiple Scenarios
The UK’s energy infrastructure faces long-term challenges. This means that energy strategy as part of operational turnaround approaches can be a differentiator for businesses, especially when used to drive broader change and develop a more flexible and nimble approach across operational areas.
However, with insolvencies at double 2020-2021 rates, businesses face genuine constraints. Capital is limited. Management bandwidth is stretched.
This means that businesses need resilience planning that accounts for various futures. By developing robust scenario plans, they can can respond quickly when circumstances change – whilst competitors scramble to react.
Ultimately, the businesses emerging strongest from this period share common characteristics: they act decisively rather than waiting for perfect information, they invest strategically rather than reactively, and they engage expert guidance to avoid costly mistakes.
This article appeared in the Jan/Feb 2026 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.