Leaving electrical equipment on standby over the 11-day Christmas holidays could cost business insurance holders as much as £110 million, it has been claimed.
According to price comparison service Make It Cheaper, the average office consumes energy at a rate of ten kilowatt hours per employee, per day when heated and with all equipment running on standby.
Managing director of the company Jonathan Elliott commented that leaving a PC monitor on all night wastes enough energy to microwave six cold turkey dinners.
He said: "Someone needs to take responsibility to turn the thermostat down and go to each wall socket and flick the switch or, better still, just unplug everything you don't need. You'd be crackers not to."
Last week, Make It Cheaper recommended that lodging an appeal against inaccurate business rate assessments with the Valuation Office Agency can help firms to cut their expenditure.
The group added that it was able to reduce rates at one of its offices by 27 per cent through an appeal.
