Teaming up to offer small businesses one-on-one energy saving advice

May 17, 2022

FortisBC and GreenStep Solutions team up to help small businesses conserve energy and reduce emissions

Surrey, B.C.  ̶  May 17, 2022: With the price of everything continuing to surge across the country, controlling operating costs is more important than ever for small businesses in B.C. To assist with this, FortisBC Inc. and FortisBC Energy Inc. (collectively, FortisBC) are working with GreenStep Solutions Inc. (GreenStep) to provide small and medium-sized businesses with free customized energy advice to increase awareness of energy saving behaviors and rebate programs that could help reduce their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and costs in their operations.

“This popular program has been well-received and has achieved great savings for businesses in the Southern Interior and Vancouver Island regions since it was introduced four years ago,” said Lynne Williams, program specialist, conservation and energy management, FortisBC. “Expanding this offering to the Lower Mainland is very exciting for us and will give us an opportunity to engage with those business owners one-on-one to understand their energy needs and support them with our conservation and energy management programs.”

GreenStep representatives will be visiting participating businesses across the Lower Mainland–including Langley and Squamish from now through the end of August to provide business owners with a better understanding of their energy use and how they are spending their energy dollars. They will also provide businesses with ideas of how they can reduce their energy use, including low to no cost tips on things like water heating, cooking needs or maintaining room temperatures.

Each consultation takes only around 15 to 30 minutes, and businesses also have the option to sign up for a consultation via telephone or videoconferencing. For those business owners looking to increase energy efficiency and achieve long-term savings, they can also learn what equipment upgrades they can make specific to their operations and the FortisBC rebate programs that may be available to assist in reducing costs. Those choosing to upgrade equipment will receive ongoing support to implement energy-efficiency upgrades and assistance accessing rebates if applicable.

Keith Page, owner and operator of The Repair Factory, a computer repair shop in Nelson, is one of the many business owners that took part in the program.

“We’re very fortunate to have partners like FortisBC here to support our community in reducing their energy use and programs like these make increasing energy efficiency accessible for our businesses,” said Page. “I’d been looking for ways to reduce my operating costs but wasn’t sure where to start. With the information that I was provided from FortisBC, I can now help make my business be more energy efficient while reducing my operating costs.”

FortisBC and GreenStep exceeded last year’s goal, visiting over 1800 businesses in the Southern Interior and Vancouver Island regions, and completing over 740 energy assessments–where they identified 757,468 kilowatt hours of potential energy savings in LED lighting retrofit projects alone. In 2020, GreenStep helped businesses identify approximately 5756 gigajoules (GJ) of natural gas savings, the equivalent natural gas use of 68 homes for a year, using on average about 85 GJ a year.

Providing direct support for small businesses is one of the ways FortisBC is working to make energy efficiency more accessible for all its customers and towards supporting a lower carbon B.C. and its 30BY30 target to reduce customers’ greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

Small businesses have until November 30, 2022 to book a consultation. To sign up or learn more, visit fortisbc.com/smallbusiness or email [email protected].

 

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