If energy costs have been making it harder to manage your business lately, you're not imagining it, and you're not alone. Since the end of 2025, fuel prices have risen by more than 25%, driven by conflict in the Middle East and layered on top of pressures many businesses are still absorbing from the war in Ukraine. As those increases work their way through to gas and electricity contracts as they come up for renewal, the vast majority of the UK's 5.5 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are affected in one way or another.
It's easy to feel like this is just something to absorb and get through. Research from Giki, released in July 2026, drawing on analysis across all major UK sectors and our library of 750+ proven decarbonisation actions, points to a more useful way to think about it. Energy price shocks are becoming a recurring part of doing business, not a one-off; which means the businesses that build resilience now will be better placed for whatever comes next.
Where the cost pressure actually comes from
Energy costs don't just show up on your gas and electricity bills. They feed through into the price of raw materials, freight and logistics, and anything your suppliers buy that's energy-intensive, and they can ripple into borrowing costs and customer demand too. If you've felt the pressure from more than one direction at once, that's likely why.
Some sectors are more exposed than others. Farming, food and drink, and transport and logistics tend to feel it hardest, combining high energy use with tighter margins and less room to pass costs on. Materials and manufacturing are also heavily exposed.
The good news: you have options, and many cost nothing
Here's the part that often gets missed. Of 120 actions identified in our research as directly relevant to protecting against energy price shocks, a significant share require no capital outlay at all, just changed habits and a bit of attention. One simple example: a facility walk-around (sometimes called an "Energy Treasure Hunt") has helped businesses cut energy use by more than 5%, at zero cost.
The actions fall into three groups, which is a useful way to think about where to start:
Quick wins. Efficiency and behaviour changes — the fastest to put in place, the cheapest, and the ones you'll feel on your next bill. Things like sealing draughts, fixing compressed air leaks, or running an energy treasure hunt with your team.
Future proofers. Bigger, longer-term decisions — retrofits, electrifying a fleet or process, on-site renewables. These take more time and resource, but they deliver the most lasting change, and the cost of acting is falling as the cost of waiting rises.
Enablers. The foundations that make everything else easier — a smart meter, a quick staff briefing, a simple energy policy. They won't save you money on their own, but they make the bigger wins easier to find and act on.
"Businesses don't have to choose between protecting their bottom line and protecting the planet — in the great majority of cases, the same action does both, and a large number of them cost nothing to start."
— Jo Hand, Giki co-founder
It looks different for every business
A restaurant, a construction firm, a design agency and a manufacturer all have different starting points. Our research breaks this down by sector: a small restaurant might start with an energy treasure hunt and a kitchen ventilation upgrade; a construction company with eco-driving training and a phased fleet transition; a design agency with an office energy checklist and a simple commuting policy. Generic advice is a useful starting point, but specific, relevant actions are what actually get implemented.
You don't have to figure this out alone
This is exactly why we built Giki Actions. You can build your own free, personalised climate action plan in around 60 minutes, no sustainability team and no external support required. You decide your focus — for example, your plan might focus solely on energy price actions. It's really straightforward to use: tell us about your business, and we'll identify the actions most relevant to you, prioritised by impact and ease of implementation, drawn from over 750 proven actions across 190+ sectors.
Other businesses who've used it have found it gives them exactly the clarity they were missing:
"I used the information in the Giki Actions report to take to our Board to identify the quick wins, and to enable us to adopt actions that we can integrate into our day-to-day operations. The metrics and targets are invaluable."
— Laura Harrison, Head of Sustainability, Barley Communications
"The Giki Actions report exceeded all expectations — brilliantly efficient and relatable to my organisation."
— Nicky Bancroft, Partnership Manager, Think Active
Build your free climate action plan
Energy price shocks are disruptive, but they're also, consistently, the moments when businesses find changes that make them stronger — lower bills, lower carbon, more resilience, all at once. The fastest way to find out where to start is to build your free climate action plan.
It's free, it takes about an hour, and it will tell you exactly where to start.