The cost of doing nothing: building the energy investment case for 2027

For finance leaders, 2026 has been a reminder that energy is traded in a naturally volatile market.

What organisations can limit is how much of that volatility reaches the bottom line.

Before 2027 budgets are signed off, one question deserves a place on the agenda:

What is your current energy strategy costing you?

The answer lies in comparing the long-term cost of business as usual with the cost of an optimised strategy.

The difference is what might be called an energy value gap.

In financial terms, the gap is calculated by subtracting the present value of an optimised approach, including investment, from the present value of continuing as usual.

This figure shows how much an organisation could gain by changing how energy is generated, stored, used and bought.

Framed this way, the cost of not investing becomes as important to finance leaders as the capital cost of solar, battery storage or efficiency projects.

The comparison is becoming more pressing as the economics of business-as-usual change.

The growing price of standing still

In 2026, the UK energy market was shaped by factors including conflict in the Middle East, extreme summer heat and tight gas supplies heading into winter.

When conflict broke out in late February, April gas contracts rose 79% in two trading days, before easing through spring and later returning to levels last seen in the 2022 energy crisis.

Yet wholesale prices are only part of the picture.

Non-commodity costs can account for up to 60% of a business energy bill.

These charges fund the grid, infrastructure and policy mechanisms behind a changing energy system, and are set by network operators, Ofgem and government independently of the wholesale market.

Many are on the rise, including Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) costs, forecasted to be £9.5bn in 2027/28, which would be a 24.8% increase from April 26-27 rates, and the Energy Intensive Industries (EII) Support Levy, which goes up from 1 April 2027.

For organisations that change nothing, higher charges will flow straight through to margins.

Building an integrated energy strategy

Tailored energy procurement will always be central to managing costs, and becomes even more effective when how energy is bought is considered alongside how energy is generated, stored and used.

Coordinating these helps determine the volume that needs to be purchased in the first place:

• Generate: produce renewable power on site where the long-term economics outperform buying from the grid, reducing external dependency and providing greater visibility over future energy costs.

• Store: use battery storage to shift energy through time, increasing the return from on-site generation, cutting higher-cost imports and, where site economics and market conditions allow, accessing additional flexibility value.

• Optimise: remove unnecessary demand, often the lowest-cost saving available, through controls, efficiency measures and intelligent energy management before capital is deployed elsewhere.

• Procure: secure the remaining requirement through a bespoke energy procurement strategy, managing market risk and helping provide long-term cost certainty.

Inspired’s iEnergy combines all four in one integrated ecosystem, designed around achieving a long-term lowest levelised cost of energy.

From utility bill to investment case

Energy projects deserve the same scrutiny as any other capital investment, judged on financial return rather than on consumption or carbon savings alone.

The benchmark for that return is not zero, but the future cash flows of continuing to buy energy as usual.

Take a proposed project requiring £2m of capital: the instinctive question is whether the organisation can afford the outlay, but the more important consideration is what not investing will cost.

For some estates, the gap between the two may be modest, while for energy-intensive or multi-site businesses, the long-term cash-flow opportunity could be significant.

Until both scenarios have been compared, the board cannot know.

The objective: the lowest whole-life cost of energy

Once business as usual has been modelled, the task becomes finding the combination of measures that delivers the lowest whole-life cost of energy across the organisation.

Each part of the strategy affects the others: more on-site generation can change the optimal battery size, storage can alter the value of generation, and lower baseload consumption can influence both, with every adjustment shaping how much energy needs to be procured.

Managed together, these measures form an investable portfolio rather than a collection of individual projects.

Closing the energy value gap can lower overheads, strengthen operating profit, generate and protect future cash flows, build resilience, prepare sites for electrification and accelerate decarbonisation.

How big is your energy value gap?

As 2027 budgets and capital priorities are finalised, these questions deserve a place on the board agenda:

Through iEnergy, Inspired can model your current energy position against an integrated generate, store, optimise and procure strategy, identifying opportunities to reduce whole-life energy costs and calculating the returns and cash-flow potential.

Before judging whether energy investment is expensive, every board should know one number: the cost of doing nothing.