When energy becomes a significant cost line, attention goes to the supply contract. That is worth doing, and it is the second step. The first is finding out what is consuming the energy, because most companies do not know with any precision.
Measure before you act
An invoice gives you a total. It does not tell you which equipment, which shift, or which process is responsible. Without that, efficiency spending is guesswork.
Sub-metering the main loads, even temporarily with clamp meters, usually costs little and produces surprises: equipment running outside production hours, compressors leaking, heating and cooling working against each other, a process running hotter or longer than the specification requires.
The cheapest savings are almost always operational rather than capital.
Look at the base load first
Measure consumption when nothing is producing — overnight, or at the weekend. Whatever that figure is, it is being paid for continuously and produces nothing.
Reducing base load is usually a matter of switching things off on a schedule rather than buying anything.
Then the contract
With consumption understood, a supply discussion becomes concrete: you know your profile, when you use power, and whether you can shift any of it. Fixed and variable arrangements carry different risks, and the right choice depends on how much certainty the business needs rather than on which looks cheaper today.
Decide what you will do if costs rise again
Model it. At what input price does a product line stop being viable? Which customers could absorb a surcharge and which would leave? What could you shift to off-peak if it mattered?
Having those answers ready converts the next increase from a crisis into an adjustment. That preparation is worth more than most efficiency projects.