This is CBS High in the World. I'm John Batch with my colleague, Gene Marks, of the Guardian

newspaper UK and US Edition, as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer, a hometown newspaper,

entrepreneur, the Hill. He writes for a lot of distinguished publications. Now he keeps

a site at medium.com where he gathers together his articles for all of his publications. And

this is especially helpful for small businesses. How to save money on the utility bill,

pending the coming contraction. What are your recommendations, Gene?

Well, John, here's what we are seeing in the market. The cost of utilities has been skyrocketing

over the past couple of years. If you're a business, you are probably seeing an increase in

utilities costs, primarily electricity, of anywhere from 50 to 75% over what it was two,

two and a half years ago. There was a ton of volatility in the energy markets. We're clearly

seeing it at the gas pump, but I'm talking about running your business. And a lot of my clients

are struggling with that. So I did write a piece, a big piece for the Inquirer, just this past

week about dealing with that. Like what are companies doing to deal with higher costs of energy to run

their businesses? So I do want to make sure that I offer some advice to you if you're listening,

don't know what you do to keep these costs under control. Number one, for sure, you should definitely

get an audit from your local utility provider. I wrote this for the Philly Inquirer,

in Philadelphia, Pico is the local utility provider. Those send somebody out for free.

All the big utility companies do that. They'll walk around and they'll make some,

make advice to you as to how you could be saving on energy. You should definitely talk to your

accountant and take advantage of all these provisions and the inflation reduction act because there

are some provisions for businesses. If they buy electric vehicles, if they buy energy-efficient

materials for them, if they're in certain industries, very, very helpful as well. Two other quick

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