Are you one of these? This article's for you!
Accounts Payable Professionals
Sustainability Professionals
Energy Management Professionals
Facilities Management Professionals
Finance & Investment Professionals
Procurement & Supply Chain Leaders
Legal and Compliance Professionals
Technology & Innovation Leaders
- 2025 US Outlook of Rising Energy Costs by State: States like California, Florida, and Texas face steep increases due to infrastructure upgrades, weather, and demand.
- Impact on Businesses: Rising costs affect budgets, profitability, and COGS, requiring better energy management.
- Invoiced & Smart Meter Data: Tools that provide detailed cost visibility and real-time usage insights to identify inefficiencies and save money.
- Weather Data Integration: Smart meter data combined with weather insights helps explain fluctuations.
- AI for Energy Savings: Predictive analytics optimize costs by forecasting rates, detecting inefficiencies, and recommending changes.
- Tips on Building a Business Case: Aligning green initiatives with financial benefits drives long-term savings and supports business goals.
When you align sustainability initiatives with financial metrics like cost reduction, they become opportunities rather than burdens
2025: Where Saving Carbon and Saving Cash Meet
Leveraging Greenbacks to Enable Green Initiatives
As we hurdle into 2025, bean counters and climate champions are finally seeing eye to eye, proving that conserving energy creates healthy bottom lines too.
Driven by soaring energy costs across the United States, sustainability is no longer just about ideals – it’s about improving Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).
Enterprises with sprawling facility portfolios are discovering that cutting energy waste not only shrinks their carbon footprint but also trims their operational costs. When saving the planet starts saving dollars, everyone at the table gets on board.
This shift presents a unique opportunity for Accounts Payable (AP), Sustainability, Energy, and Facilities teams to align their sustainability ideals with financial incentives. By crafting compelling, ROI-driven arguments, these teams can advocate for green initiatives that not only benefit the environment but also enhance overall financial performance.
Rising Energy Costs: The 2025 Outlook Across the United States
Energy prices are climbing steadily across the United States, creating significant challenges for businesses and households alike. While the trend is nationwide, certain states are feeling the burden more acutely than others.
These price surges are driven by a combination of factors, including ongoing infrastructure updates, extreme weather events, surging demand, and evolving regulatory policies aimed at modernizing energy grids or reducing carbon emissions.
In some regions, utilities are passing along the costs of grid improvements and renewable energy investments directly to consumers. In others, rapid population growth or energy-intensive industries are straining supply, leading to increased rates.
Why Energy Costs (Should) Matter to Enterprises
Creating Healthier Bottom Lines
Rising energy costs are not just an operational inconvenience—they have far-reaching implications that directly impact an organization’s financial health, particularly its Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and overall profitability. For enterprises managing large facility portfolios, the stakes are even higher. Every increase in utility rates ripples through the organization, affecting budgets, operations, and margins. Here’s a deeper look into the challenges rising energy costs pose and why addressing them is critical:
Volatile Budgets: Unpredictable Energy Prices Complicate Financial Planning
Energy markets are highly dynamic, influenced by factors such as regulatory changes, extreme weather events, infrastructure investments, and shifting supply-demand dynamics. This volatility makes it challenging for enterprises to predict and control energy expenditures.
For example:
- A hospital network managing hundreds of facilities must factor in electricity and gas rate fluctuations, which can vary widely depending on regional and seasonal trends.
- Unexpected rate hikes, like those caused by storm recovery surcharges in Florida or delayed energy auctions in Ohio, can derail carefully constructed budgets.
This unpredictability forces businesses to allocate larger buffers in their budgets, reducing funds available for other critical investments. Without the ability to forecast energy costs accurately, organizations face greater risks of overspending or missing financial targets.
Inefficient Facilities: The Hidden Drain on Resources
One of the biggest challenges enterprises face is unnoticed inefficiencies in energy consumption. Without detailed visibility into how energy is being used across facilities, identifying waste becomes nearly impossible.
Key issues include:
Old Equipment
Aging HVAC systems, lighting, and machinery consume far more energy than modern, energy-efficient alternatives.
Idle/Off-Peak Energy Usage
Equipment left running during non-operational hours or inefficient scheduling of high-energy tasks can lead to unnecessary costs.
Uneven Location Performance
In multi-site enterprises, energy use varies, with some locations consuming more due to maintenance issues, design flaws, or staff practices.
For enterprises like retail chains or manufacturing plants, undetected inefficiencies across dozens or hundreds of facilities can compound into millions of dollars in wasted energy annually.
Tighter Margins: Energy Costs Directly Impact COGS
Energy is a significant operational cost for many industries, and as energy prices rise, the burden on COGS increases. This is particularly impactful in industries where profit margins are already thin, such as manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare.
For instance:
- A food manufacturer may see its production costs surge as electricity rates climb, driving up the price of refrigeration, cooking, and packaging processes.
- In retail, higher energy costs for lighting, heating, and cooling stores can make it harder to maintain competitive pricing.
These increased costs must either be absorbed by the business, which squeezes profit margins, or passed on to customers, which can hurt competitiveness.
Stakeholder and Regulatory Pressure
Energy costs also tie into broader stakeholder and regulatory concerns. Investors and boards are increasingly scrutinizing energy expenditures as part of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives. Simultaneously, governments are introducing policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions, which can add compliance costs.
Businesses that proactively manage energy costs and adopt sustainable practices are better positioned to meet these demands, mitigate risks, and maintain strong stakeholder confidence.
Want to Learn More?
- Mandatory Climate Disclosure Prep: Utility Invoice Processing and Automated Scope 2 Usage Capture – How AMI Strategies’ automated utility invoice processing and Scope 2 usage capture solutions help organizations prepare for mandatory climate disclosure requirements, which are becoming increasingly prevalent as governments push for enhanced corporate transparency on environmental impact
- Technology, Telecom & Utility Invoices: A Guide for Multi-Location Corporations – A comprehensive guide for multi-location corporations on managing technology, telecom, and utility invoices, emphasizing the importance of accurate inventory management and cost control. It highlights how AMI Strategies’ solutions can streamline invoice processing and enhance financial oversight across various locations.
Using Data to Guide Fiscally-Driven Energy Conservation
Follow the Money
Despite these challenges, rising energy costs also present an opportunity for enterprises to rethink their energy strategies and implement cost-saving measures. By leveraging both invoiced meter data and smart meter data analytics, along with investing in energy-efficient systems, businesses can achieve significant gains:
View Macro and Micro Energy Consumption & Spend Trends
- Invoiced Meter Data: Provides a detailed breakdown of utility costs across facilities, helping organizations reconcile bills, detect overcharges, and understand spending patterns.
- Smart Meter Data: Offers real-time, facility-specific energy usage insights, enabling businesses to track consumption throughout various hours of the day and days of the week.
Identify and Address Inefficiencies
- Invoiced Meter Data: Highlights anomalies in billing or excessive usage, helping teams target energy-intensive locations or malfunctioning systems.
- Smart Meter Data: Pinpoints inefficiencies at the utility-provided meter or equipment level, such as HVAC systems running unnecessarily or lighting being used during non-operational hours.
Optimize Operational Schedules
- Invoiced Meter Data: Analyzes cost patterns to adjust budgets and allocate resources effectively.
- Smart Meter Data: Supports scheduling adjustments to shift high-energy tasks to off-peak hours, reducing utility charges during peak demand periods.
By integrating both strategies, enterprises can take a data-driven approach to energy management. These efforts don’t just offset rising costs—they drive long-term savings, improve COGS, enhance operational efficiency, and support sustainability goals.
The Role of Invoiced Meter Data and Cost Visibility
Understanding invoiced meter data and having visibility into utility costs empower businesses to pinpoint inefficiencies, optimize energy consumption, and enhance financial planning.
For enterprises supporting many locations, this can mean extracting data from thousands of pages of utility invoices which is both labor intensive. time consuming and error prone.
Here’s how AMI Strategies is revolutionizing this process:
On-Time Consumption & Spend Data Through Automated Invoice Retrieval: AMI sets up Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots to automatically retrieve native PDF invoices every month from utility provider portals as soon as they are available.
Fast & Accurate Data Extraction Through Proprietary PDF Translators: AMI’s translators capture thousands of pages of utility invoice data at the most granular levels within minutes, maintaining the original context and hierarchy.
Trustworthy Data Sets Through Strenuous Data Quality Validation: A series of programmed validations verify the accuracy of captured data, ensuring every cost and usage total is mathematically accurate and through comprehensive validations of account details, invoices, and payment information.
Uniform Data Presentation: The data is presented uniformly within the AMI platform, accessible via dashboards and reporting, and can be shared with other platforms.
Invoiced meter data isn’t just a tool for visibility—it’s a foundation for data-driven decision-making that aligns energy efficiency with cost reduction.
Measuring Statistical Uncertainty
Why Accuracy Matters
For enterprises with many locations, calculating energy consumption and Scope 2 emissions (indirect emissions from purchased electricity, heating, and cooling) typically involves some degree of statistical uncertainty due to data variability, estimation methods, and regional differences in emission factors.
- 20-40% or higher: Likely when data is incomplete, or assumptions and proxies are heavily used – common for enterprises with limited resources for detailed data tracking
- 10-20%: This is a common range of uncertainty for enterprises using regional grid-average emission factors, where data quality and completeness are moderate, reflecting typical variances in electricity usage patterns, regional grid emissions, and estimations for missing data.
- 5-10%: Achievable with higher-quality data, such as location-specific emission factors or contractual instruments (e.g., renewable energy certificates, direct utility data). Often seen in enterprises that have invested in better data collection systems or energy management tools.
- 0%: AMI customers enjoy reporting a statistical uncertainty level of “0” because the data is collected directly from the source (the utility invoice document) on a monthly basis, validated for 100% data accuracy, and the source invoice document is provided as evidence and for reference.
For more information regarding statistical uncertainty in energy reporting, please visit: Understanding Uncertainty in Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimates: Technical Considerations and Statistical Calculation Methods
The Role of Smart Meter and Weather Pattern Data
Smart meter data provides granular insights into energy consumption based on hours in the day and days of the week, while local weather station data explains why fluctuations occur. By correlating these two datasets, enterprises can better understand the impact of environmental factors on energy usage.
AMI Strategies is piloting this capability with select customers, offering early insights into how weather-driven trends influence energy costs. This feature will be widely available to all AMI customers in the coming months, enhancing their ability to plan for seasonal and regional energy demands.
Key benefits:
- Enhanced Forecasting: Predict energy peaks based on weather patterns.
- Informed Adjustments: Understand and mitigate the impact of extreme weather events on utility expenses.
- Proactive Maintenance: Use weather-linked insights to optimize HVAC systems and other weather-sensitive equipment.
Where AI Will Have an Impact in Energy Cost Savings
AI and predictive analytics are poised to revolutionize energy cost management.
- Predictive Maintenance: AI can analyze equipment performance and identify potential failures before they occur, reducing downtime and associated energy waste.
- Dynamic Pricing Optimization: By forecasting utility rate changes, AI enables businesses to shift energy-intensive operations to off-peak hours.
- Behavioral Insights: AI-driven algorithms detect inefficiencies in facility operations and recommend adjustments to improve energy usage.
- Advanced Forecasting Models: Predictive analytics integrate historical energy data with real-time inputs, offering unparalleled accuracy in cost projections.
Through these innovations, AI transforms energy management from a reactive process into a proactive, cost-saving strategy.
The Future Is Now - Using AI Predictive Analytics
Partner Case Study: Reducing Energy Costs Across Retail Locations with AI
Retail chains often face high energy costs due to peak electrical demand across multiple locations.
This AMI strategic partner uses their AI-powered platform to analyze building managements systems to understand how store zones respond to outdoor air conditions and customer traffic, identifying patterns that drive peak demand.
By incorporating weather forecasts and occupancy data, their platform predicts peak demand for the upcoming days. The software then controls the equipment within the building to shave the peak while still maintaining a comfortable environment.
2024 Savings
- Retailor A: 121 locations, 50.3 MW/$860.6K in savings
- Retailor B: 1,018 locations, 298 MW/$3.92M in savings
This approach helps retail chains achieve significant energy cost savings while ensuring a comfortable environment for customers and employees.
Building a Business Case
How Teams Can Drive the Financial Argument for Green Initiatives
For Accounts Payable (AP), Sustainability, Energy, and Facilities teams, driving green initiatives within an enterprise often hinges on reframing sustainability as a financial opportunity rather than a cost center. Decision-makers are more likely to support projects that offer clear, measurable returns on investment (ROI) and align with the organization’s broader financial goals. By leveraging data, highlighting cost impacts, and sharing real-world success stories, teams can craft compelling arguments that resonate with leadership.
Here’s how to make the financial case for sustainability:
Emphasize ROI: Highlight Payback Periods and Long-Term Savings
Sustainability initiatives are more likely to gain executive support when they’re framed as investments with quantifiable returns. Teams should calculate and communicate the payback periods and cost savings associated with green projects.
For example:
Energy Efficient Upgrades
Switching to LED lighting or upgrading HVAC systems may involve upfront costs, but these projects often pay for themselves within 1–3 years through reduced energy bills.
Renewals Energy Adoption
On-site solar installations or Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) can lock in lower energy rates over time, shielding businesses from future price hikes.
Presenting these projects in financial terms—such as annual savings, ROI percentages, or reduced operating expenses—ensures they are viewed as bottom-line benefits, not discretionary expenses.
Leverage Data: Use Smart Meter Insights to Build a Data-Driven Case
Data is one of the most powerful tools teams can use to gain buy-in for sustainability projects. Smart meter insights and utility analytics provide hard evidence of where energy is being wasted and how proposed changes can lead to cost reductions.
Key ways to leverage data:
Pinpoint
Inefficiencies
Show Before-and-After Scenarios
Use data from similar projects and case studies to demonstrate how proposed initiatives will impact energy consumption and costs.
Present Predictive
Models
Project future savings by comparing energy costs with/without the initiative over time, using clear visuals to communicate the cost impact.
Data-driven proposals reduce skepticism and build confidence by providing tangible, evidence-based projections.
Demonstrate COGS Impact: Link Energy Savings to Profit Margins
Energy costs are a significant contributor to Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), particularly in industries like manufacturing, logistics, and retail. Demonstrating how sustainability projects directly reduce operational expenses and improve profit margins is critical to making the financial case.
For instance:
Manufacturing Plant
A manufacturing plant that reduces energy usage by 15% could lower production costs by $500,000 annually, allowing the business to reinvest savings into growth initiatives.
Retail Chain
A retail chain that implements energy-efficient lighting across its stores can lower utility bills, enabling more competitive pricing for customers without sacrificing profit margins.
By framing energy savings as a COGS reduction, teams can show how sustainability initiatives contribute to healthier financial performance.
Showcase Case Studies: Share Real-World Success Stories
One of the most effective ways to persuade leadership is by presenting real-world examples of similar organizations that have achieved measurable financial benefits through sustainability initiatives.
Examples Case Studies:
Tesco PLC
Achieved a 10% reduction in energy consumption over four years by implementing smart meters and optimizing HVAC and lighting systems, saving millions in operational costs. Read more here.
University of Oxford
Identified over £550,000 in annual energy savings by analyzing smart meter data and addressing inefficiencies across campus buildings. Read more here.
Stryker Osteonics
Identified over $385K in potential energy savings through a 3-day, 13 employee Energy Treasure Hunt at its medical technology manufacturing facility in NJ. Read more here.
Read More Success Stories:
For more examples of energy success stories, please visit EnergyStar’s Tools and Resources page.
When presenting case studies, emphasize the similarities to your organization’s operations, challenges, and goals. Highlighting relatable success stories demonstrates that the proposed initiatives are both achievable and financially rewarding.
Connect Sustainability to Broader Business Goals
To gain leadership buy-in, it’s essential to position sustainability initiatives within the context of the company’s broader objectives, such as:
Enhancing Brand Reputation
Show how reducing energy costs and emissions can improve the company’s ESG scores, attracting investors and customers.
Mitigating Risk
Highlight how energy efficiency reduces exposure to volatile energy prices, operational disruptions, and regulatory penalties.
Driving Innovation
Present sustainability as an opportunity to modernize operations, adopt cutting-edge technologies, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.
By linking sustainability to the company’s strategic priorities, teams can build a stronger, more integrated case for their initiatives.
Accounts Payable: Using Labor Costs to Build a Business Case
Reducing COGS for enterprises with multiple locations can also involve addressing the manual, labor-intensive AP process of handling utility invoices. This process frequently leads to late fees, shutoff notices, and service disruptions.
Processing just the “top line” of an invoice—which only captures payment information without including summary or granular usage details—takes an average of 10 minutes per invoice at a cost estimated by IOFM at $15.97 per invoice.
- 50 Locations = 67 hours / $6,388 in labor cost per month
- 100 Locations = 133 hours / $12,776 in labor cost per month
- 300 Locations = 400 hours / $38,328 in labor cost per month
These estimates account solely for labor involved in invoice processing activities such as retrieval, verification, coding, and submission for approval. They do not include the additional labor required to process hundreds to thousands of payments monthly.
Crafting the Perfect Pitch
When presenting green initiatives to leadership, ensure your pitch includes the following:
By reframing sustainability as a financial opportunity, AP, Sustainability, Energy, and Facilities teams can turn green initiatives into no-brainer decisions for enterprise leaders.
Clear Financial Metrics
ROI, payback periods, and projected savings.
Compelling Data
Evidence from smart meter insights and utility analytics
Real-World Proof
Case studies from similar organizations
Alignment with Goals
Aligning with financial, operational & strategic goals
By reframing sustainability as a financial opportunity, AP, Sustainability, Energy, and Facilities teams can turn green initiatives into no-brainer decisions for enterprise leaders.
Sustainability is a different animal—you can’t solve it alone. You need to do it together with others
Final Thoughts
As energy costs continue to climb, the convergence of financial efficiency and sustainability becomes more compelling than ever. By leveraging invoiced meter data, smart meter insights, and cutting-edge AI technologies, enterprises can drive both environmental and economic value.
AMI Strategies is proud to be at the forefront of this transformation, helping clients navigate the complexities of energy management with innovative tools and actionable insights. By embracing these advancements, businesses can reduce costs, lower their carbon footprint, and strengthen their competitive edge—all while preparing for a sustainable future.
This case study underscores the value of partnering with a seasoned expert like AMI, who brings the technology, expertise, and dedication needed to transform invoicing from a tedious burden into a strategic advantage.
David Sonenstein - Vice President of Product Strategy
AMI Strategies
With over 20 years in the industry, David helps orchestrate AMI’s vision for vendor hyperautomation. While contributing to AMI’s adoption of automation technologies, system integrations and technology frameworks, his research focuses on enterprise market and technology trends and where automation solutions can help organizations achieve their desired business outcomes. He currently serves on the executive board of the Enterprise Technology Management Association (ETMA) and is an associate of the Technology Business Management (TBM) Council.
