Sustainability initiatives need to have a cost savings to get everyone in the business on board - especially franchisees. But to calculate ROIs you need ongoing energy data.
Getting data from surveys and uploads in a franchise network is a non-starter though. Ideally you need the data automatically to report and start calculating the ROI of emission reduction measures.
Here are the steps to collecting ongoing franchise energy data automatically and simple ways to calculate cost-saving ROIs from emission reduction projects.
The best part is it's guaranteed to be a cost saving in the business so everyone is onboard.
Reduce franchise energy costs
This is an odd first step for data collection and emission reduction but let me explain.
To get execs, the board, franchisees and everyone else in the business to back initiatives there needs to be a clear cost reduction.
Termina puts energy cost savings in front of franchisees that are automated at the click of a button.
We do this by automatically keeping franchises on the lowest prices for every location every month.
Each franchisee that signs up has their bills start flowing through our platform.
That means you now have a dashboard to access an accurate energy dataset in one place.
You can use this for reporting or for calculating the cost savings of sustainability projects across the franchise network.
Sustainability reporting
With your new dashboard full of energy usage and cost data, you can export usage and emission data at the click of a button.
Use this for reporting usage and emissions across corporate stores (scope 1/2) and reporting for franchise stores (scope 3).
This gives you audit-grade data to back up your reporting for TCFD, ESOS and CSRD, which is required in Australia and the EU in 2025 for the fiscal year 2024.
More importantly, you can use this data in the platform to easily calculate the ROI of cost reductions from sustainability projects, so you can get everyone on board with sustainability from a purely financial perspective.
Sustainability reporting
There are 6 main levers you can pull to reduce emissions across a franchise network:
- Solar and battery installations
- Electricity efficiency upgrades
- Gas-to-electric conversions
- Greenpower/offsets
- Fleet electrification
- Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
You can use our platform to help rollout solar where you otherwise couldn't, as well as Power Purchase Agreements, but that's outside the scope of this article.
If you want to learn more about those you can reach out here.
Greenpower/offsets
Greenpower and carbon offsets are the simplest short-term win for reducing emissions, but they don't reduce costs.
The way you get around this with Termina is we reduce the energy prices we mentioned above, then give you an offset percentage that matches your cost savings.
That way you can offset 20-50% of your emissions depending on savings with no out-of-pocket costs.
Electricity efficiency upgrades
Mature companies tend to have older equipment that was installed years or sometimes decades ago that is very inefficient by today's standards.
But understand the ROI for upgrading that equipment is exceedingly hard.
Imagine if you can help your franchise network buy equipment by seeing the running cost, not just the upfront cost?
That means everyone in the business will be incentivised to install/replace equipment with the lowest energy cost, and therefore lowest emitting equipment.
Once you have some data on the platform, you can use it to easily calculate equipment running costs without any hardware.
Then in a couple of clicks, use those running costs to simulate replacements with new equipment.
Trust me, it's easier than it sounds.
Gas electrification upgrades
An even bigger emission saving project, and one that often has greater cost savings is gas electrification upgrades.
Run the same simulations as efficiency upgrades to get a dollar figure for your energy saving projects.
With these tools you can now leverage new data to put ROI figures and payback periods to your initiatives to get the whole franchise network reducing emissions while reducing costs.
Conclusion
In summary, to reach the place you want to be: everyone in the team and the franchisees on board with your sustainability initiatives - you need to sell them on cost savings first.
Use Termina to automatically reduce franchise electricity and gas costs. If you want the franchise rollout playbook to see how easy it is, reach out here.
The best part is our saving-split model means there's no out of pocket costs for you or the franchisees, just savings on their bills.
One bill is all we need to get your franchise network on board. Or get in touch to learn more today.