A green energy body has published some helpful guidelines for cost-conscious small businesses.

Businesses should consider making their lighting arrangements more efficient to cut bills during winter, the Carbon Trust has said.

The group has published new guidance on how embracing best practices, such as installing automated sensor-based controls using LED efficient light bulbs, can help the average organisation reduce energy bills by a fifth.

It notes that with lighting accounting for around a fifth of all electricity used in the UK, even zero cost measures such as encouraging staff to switch lights off when they are not in use can deliver savings of around £350m or 2.2 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Businesses are advised to begin by finding out what lighting they have, where it is installed and how it is used. Short term actions could include launching an awareness campaign or writing a usage policy. First steps for reducing consumption are laid out as follows:

1. Understand your energy use - check the condition and operation of lamps and luminaires and monitor how the lighting is used over, say, one week to obtain a base case over which energy efficiency improvements can be measured.

2. Identify your opportunities - compile an energy checklist of your lighting. Walk round your building and complete the checklist at different times of day to identify where savings can be made.

3. Prioritise your actions - draw up an action plan detailing a schedule of what improvements need to be made and when, along with who will be responsible for them.

The guide can be downloaded for free from the Carbon Trust.