For the keen energy waster faced with demands to have an energy audit, it is vital to employ an incompetent assessor — one who can be expected to follow these principles:

1. Just turn up at site with a clipboard and start counting light fittings.

2. Never analyse historical data to identify anomalies that you could productively focus on during site visits.

3. Base your report on a previous one for a different client. A good trick is to use ‘find and replace’ to change the name in the body of the text, but overlook where it appears in headers and footers.

4. Always make at least ten recommendations, even if there is only one substantial worthwhile measure.

5. Always include recommendations for LED lighting and voltage reduction.

6. Over-estimate the savings expected from each recommendation.

7. Ignore any possibility of interactions between recommended measures.

8. Never obtain actual installation costs. Reverse-engineer them: take the annual savings and multiply by an assumed payback period.

Of course as a client, the keen energy waster has their own part to play in making the audit a futile exercise. Here are some tips:

1. Do not let anybody in the organization know about the audit visit.

2. Render all relevant data and drawings inaccessible.

3. When you receive the report, ignore it.