Duncan Cockburn, BT head of energy operations and environmental compliance and a Chartered Energy Manager from the Energy Institute, looks back on what works in pitching energy improvements to business owners.
While the work of an energy manager involves finding and developing projects that help companies save energy, those projects cannot begin without obtaining the requisite approvals. Which means that communication skills are essential for the success of energy managers.
‘The first conversation with the decision maker should not be, “Here’s a report I’ve done, can I have some money please?” I found that that’s not very successful,’ points out Duncan Cockburn, with a touch of dry understatement.
‘The hardest thing is the first sell: “I want you to spend money to do this because I tell you this is going to happen,”’ he continues. As an energy manager, he takes on the role of the intelligent customer on behalf of his employer, to inform his colleagues the financial decisionmakers who will not necessarily understand the complexities of energy management. And once the first project goes well, the trust generated helps ease the way in future conversations.
But they are all sales pitches, essentially. Even at BT, which has a very strong net zero ethos, he is aware that his proposal is competing with other business ideas for the money.
‘So you have to be able to say, this is better than that, because in two years’ time, I’m going to pay the money back, and we’re going to continue to save from that point.’
He credits Energy Institute training courses, particularly the Level 3: Advanced Energy Manager, with providing him the confidence in his abilities to put forward the business case. Or as he puts it: ‘that I’ve got it right, that the idea is sound, that other people are doing it, that it’s been tried and tested elsewhere.’
Part of that confidence came from the breadth of the course, which covers not only technical topics such as energy procurement and renewables but also human-centric topics of leadership and behaviour change.
But Cockburn also highlights the importance of the interpersonal element. In addition to the 120 hours of self-paced online training, the course features three three-day blocks of face-to-face training in London. That was where Cockburn was able to meet, and get to know, professionals like him working in very different contexts. That helped open his eyes to other ways of working.
Making the most of such an opportunity demanded good levels of communication, he says, as during conversations with other attendees he had to find a way to make them understand technical detail without having had any of experience of it. Or, as he puts it, explaining the importance of air conditioning in a telephone exchange to an energy manager at Port Talbot steelworks.
But good communication for Cockburn is also about hearing feedback while on the job. He adds: ‘Being able to learn from what you’re being told, particularly when it’s negative, helps shape the future argument to make it more successful.’
He gives an example from his own experience, recalling how some of his early energy savings proposals involved changing people’s behaviour. But they didn’t land well, and faced resistance with comments such as “You can’t put a 2, 3, 4, 5% reduction in cost or energy on the fact that somebody may or may not turn off a switch.”
Rather than admit defeat, Cockburn pivoted towards recommending automation, which avoided the problem. ‘Very quickly, a lot of my business cases were about control; taking away the human element.’
Agility, and confidence, both bolstered by training from the Energy Institute, has helped Cockburn become more successful when pitching energy management proposals to his employer.
He concludes: ‘I’ve gone into conversations about business cases and not taken the business case I’ve spent six months developing, because I know that of the three that I’ve got, that one is just not going to win, so there’s no point having the negative conversation…You can only do that when you know what you’re competing against, what their priorities are, and how to communicate your own.’
The Level 3 Advanced Energy Manager face-to-face sessions return in autumn 2026. The first of three sessions takes place 5-7 October in London Level 3: Advanced Energy Manager | Energy Institute
Cockburn also recently described his experiences further on the Level 3 course in a short Energy Institute video: There’s real money to be made in energy management – Here’s how
Written by Will Dalrymple MEI, Head of Content, Energy Institute
This article appeared in the September 2026 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.
