Rising energy prices are grabbing everyone’s attention. If they are not on your radar yet, they soon will be.  

A bottleneck is holding back organizations of all sizes from controlling their energy use and energy costs. However, there is also a simple solution available.  

Controlling energy and reducing carbon emissions requires data. The senior leadership in any organization must first have an accurate picture of what’s driving their organization’s utility costs. If energy and water are not measured, they can’t be controlled. Continual data is also needed to monitor actions and report progress.  

Essential energy information is provided on utility bills. The problem is the data is not digitized to be easily retrieved electronically. Making utility data useful for controlling water, energy and carbon emissions is still pretty much a manual process; expensive, time consuming and often error ridden. This is the bottleneck preventing action.  

Fortunately, the solution is a simple one. Every utility bill should have its data embedded in a standard open-source QR Code that is universal for all utilities. Then, an organization would simply scan the QR codes on their utility bills. All the information they need would be easily extracted and uploaded into a database for analysis and action in the form they need.  

QR codes have transformed other business sectors. They reduce transaction costs and improve competitiveness. In addition, governments recently turned to QR codes to help millions of people access and validate their public health vaccination records. The benefits of QR codes are well proven. 

The manual processes from the past century have not yet been replaced in the utility billing sector. As a result, we have 21^st century energy problems. We need a 21^st century data management solution. QR codes on utility bills are a game-changer for businesses that want to control carbon emissions and reduce energy costs.    

360 Energy has been delivering energy management services to organizations and businesses across Canada and the United States for the past 25 years. As a result, we are intimately familiar with the data bottleneck that prevents organizations of all sizes from starting their journey to modern energy management.  

It’s time we enlisted QR codes as an ally in the effort to solve our energy challenges.