UK businesses are estimated to lose up to £24 billion every year through energy overcharging, hidden fees and inefficient procurement practices. For businesses spending more than £50,000 annually on energy, these losses are rarely marginal and often material to the bottom line. This is rarely the result of reckless consumption or poor financial management. More often, it is the predictable outcome of how the energy market has evolved and how decisions are typically made within it.
Most businesses believe they are buying independent energy advice. In practice, many are navigating a system where procurement, advisory support and remuneration are closely linked. When advice is tied to contract placement, the process naturally prioritises getting to a deal rather than pausing to test whether that deal truly reflects how a business operates.
In a market designed around transactions, renewal timelines compress, Estimated Annual Consumption figures become assumptions rather than living data points, and capacity or tolerance levels are set conservatively to avoid risk rather than optimise cost. Over time, these behaviours become normalised, even when they no longer serve the end user particularly well.
The financial impact is rarely limited to the headline unit rate. Decisions made with incomplete information compound over time. Contracts that do not align with actual usage trigger penalties and tolerance breaches. Embedded costs that are not clearly surfaced inflate bills year after year. Finance and operations teams then spend significant time reconciling charges and resolving issues that were created upstream in the procurement process.
By the time a business gains clarity on what is happening, the cost has already been absorbed. This is why visibility matters. When businesses cannot see how their energy usage, costs and contractual terms interact in real time, they are forced to make high-impact decisions based on partial information. The result is not a single poor choice, but a pattern of outcomes that gradually erodes financial performance.
At The Disruption House, our focus is on addressing this structural gap. We approach energy not as a periodic procurement exercise, but as an ongoing operational and financial exposure that needs to be monitored and understood continuously. Our energy cost savings platform brings together usage data, bill validation and contract analysis, giving businesses the ability to identify risks early and challenge assumptions before they become fixed in long-term agreements.
By maintaining oversight throughout the contract lifecycle, businesses gain the ability to slow the process down and make renewal decisions from a position of information rather than pressure. This also creates the option to wait, renegotiate or restructure contracts in a way that genuinely reflects how energy is used across the business.
We work in partnership with energy market experts LUMii to support this approach, using technology to ensure decisions are grounded in actual usage and costs rather than estimates or market norms.
There is also a broader upside to this approach. By maintaining accurate, continuous visibility over energy usage and costs, businesses simultaneously generate the data required for credible Scope 1& 2 emissions calculations. Instead of treating sustainability reporting as a separate exercise layered on top of operations, emissions data is produced as a by-product of better energy management. In practice, the same transparency that drives cost savings also supports a more robust sustainability journey, creating a rare win-win where financial discipline and emissions accountability reinforce each other rather than compete for attention.
If £24 billion continues to leak out of UK businesses each year, this should not be viewed as a series of isolated failures. It is the logical result of a market that has prioritised transaction efficiency over transparency. Addressing it requires a shift in how energy decisions are made, moving from one-off procurement moments to continuous oversight as the default.
