The Next Frontier of C&I Efficiency: Finding Savings Beyond the Obvious

Every mature energy efficiency portfolio reaches the same turning point.

The early wins have already been captured. Lighting upgrades have swept through the market. Participation plateaus, while program savings goals continue to rise. At that stage, the question facing program teams isn’t whether savings opportunities remain; it’s how to uncover them.

After years working directly with commercial and industrial customers, I’ve seen the same pattern across markets. The biggest opportunities often aren’t the most visible ones. They’re embedded in operational systems, hidden within complex equipment, or tied to processes that haven’t been evaluated through an energy efficiency lens.

Unlocking those opportunities requires more than a checklist of measures. It requires experience, curiosity, and a deep understanding of how facilities actually operate. Because in mature markets, the next wave of savings comes from looking deeper.

Moving Beyond the Lighting Era

For many years, lighting drove the success of commercial and industrial efficiency programs. Lighting was simple to identify, easy to implement, and delivered reliable savings at scale. But markets evolve. Efficiency standards improve. Technologies become standard practice. And as lighting saturation increases, its contribution to portfolio savings naturally begins to decline.

That doesn’t mean facilities are optimized. Far from it.

What it means is that programs need to shift their focus from individual technologies to entire systems. Industrial processes. Equipment operations. Control strategies. Maintenance practices. These areas rarely show up on the surface during traditional program assessments, but they often hold the greatest remaining efficiency potential. Identifying them requires a more strategic approach to facility engagement.

Expertise Makes the Difference

During one commercial and industrial program I had the opportunity to lead during my career, I worked with a large automotive facility that had already participated in numerous energy efficiency programs. From a program standpoint, the obvious opportunities had already been addressed.

But experience tells you that facilities rarely operate at peak efficiency across every system. So the team took a closer look.

Instead of focusing solely on standard measures, we analyzed how the facility’s industrial process systems were running day-to-day. That deeper analysis revealed an operational issue affecting a major piece of equipment that ran continuously.

The equipment itself wasn’t failing. It was simply operating in a way that consumed significantly more energy than necessary. Once identified, the improvement was relatively straightforward from an engineering standpoint. But the impact was anything but small.

The facility ultimately achieved more than 1.2 million kilowatt-hours in annual energy savings, all from a targeted operational adjustment. This wasn’t luck; it was the result of knowing where to look and understanding how industrial systems behave in real-world conditions. And that’s where the future of commercial and industrial programs lies.

The Real Opportunity Inside Existing Facilities

One of the biggest misconceptions about mature energy efficiency markets is that the remaining opportunities are limited. In reality, many facilities still contain significant efficiency potential. It simply exists in places that traditional programs weren’t originally designed to target.

High-performing C&I programs today are finding success by expanding their approach in several ways.

First, they’re moving beyond technology-specific upgrades and toward systems-level analysis. Instead of focusing on individual pieces of equipment, they evaluate how systems interact and where operational improvements can drive efficiency gains.

Second, they’re investing in deep collaboration with facility teams. Plant managers, maintenance staff, and system operators often understand operational challenges better than anyone else. When programs engage those experts directly, they uncover insights that traditional audits may miss.

Third, they’re treating program participation as an ongoing relationship, not a one-time project. Facilities that participated years ago often contain new opportunities as equipment ages, processes evolve, and production demands change.

When programs take this broader view, mature markets begin to reveal new layers of efficiency potential.

Why Depth Matters More Than Breadth

Commercial and industrial programs remain one of the most powerful drivers of energy savings across utility portfolios. But sustaining that performance requires programs to evolve alongside the market.

In earlier stages of efficiency portfolios, success often came from scale—reaching as many participants as possible with widely applicable measures. In mature markets, success increasingly comes from depth:

• Depth of analysis within facilities
• Depth of engagement with customers
• Depth of expertise among the engineers and program teams supporting the work

When programs focus on depth, they uncover opportunities that simply aren’t visible from the surface. And those opportunities can deliver some of the most meaningful savings in the entire portfolio.

Experience Still Matters

Energy efficiency programs are often built around technologies, incentives, and participation models. But behind every successful program is something less visible: experience. That means knowing how industrial systems operate, understanding how facilities make operational decisions, and recognizing where inefficiencies tend to emerge.

These insights don’t come from spreadsheets alone. They come from years spent inside mechanical rooms, production floors, and control rooms working alongside the people who run these facilities every day. That experience makes all the difference when markets mature and the obvious opportunities are already behind us. Because when you know where to look, there’s almost always more efficiency left to uncover.

Want to See the Full Story?

The industrial project highlighted above is just one example of how targeted system analysis can uncover significant energy savings opportunities within existing facilities.

Download the full case study to see how a non-lighting improvement uncovered more than 1.2 million kWh in annual energy savings.

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If you're exploring new ways to uncover deeper savings and strengthen participation in mature markets, our team is always ready for a conversation.