Availability of energy when and where needed, at acceptable price is a prerequisite for operation and development of any company, economy and society in general. Energy is input for all human activities and all businesses and because of that all human and business activities create certain level of demand for energy. Total energy consumption as well as energy consumption per capita has been increasing continuously throughout history and modern civilization has been built on fossil fuels and consumption of enormous quantity of energy.
Many decisions that formed today's energy flows in companies and affect business activities have been made years ago in a situation very different from current. In periods when energy was much cheaper than nowadays decisions were made to buy machines that have been using and are still using lots of energy, good thermal insulation wasn't a priority because energy for cooling and heating was cheap and production plants were created in order to minimize total production costs and not the energy consumption. Many of these solutions are still in function although the conditions have dramatically changed. s
Continuous increase of energy consumption as a result of economic and technological development, together with ascending trend of energy prices, results in increasing importance of energy. As the impact of energy on business activities increases it becomes necessary to understand the energy as the investment which has to be managed systematically with effective and efficient use of this limited resource.
