Despite relatively mild temperatures over past few months, business owners are feeling the sting of higher costs for energy this winter.

Patrick Rowland, general manager of Suites at 800 Locust, said his hotel’s energy bills have nearly doubled this winter from last year. December’s natural gas and electric bill was a whopping $10,300, and Rowland doesn’t want to see one that high again.

“Right now, we’re really starting to look at mechanical contractors who might be able to offer services to help us save on our energy costs,” Rowland said. “We are looking at products to regulate consumption of natural gas, such as controls on water heaters.”

Rowland said updates to equipment have been talked about in the past, but the higher utility bills now bring a new urgency to the matter.

“In the previous years, we might not have looked at these improvements, but with the costs doubling, it’s something we’re considering,” he said. “It could easily pay for itself within a year to a year and a half.”

Mike McBroom, owner of French Way Cleaners, said high energy prices have been hurting his operations for the past year because his garment-cleaning equipment runs on natural gas.

“Our bills are up considerably over a year ago, and they were high a year ago,” McBroom said. “We’ve had high energy and gas prices for the last year or so, and it’s very hard to deal with the higher costs.”

McBroom also decided recently to update his equipment to make it more energy efficient. He’s replaced pipes on his two boilers, along with other improvements. “We would be a lot worse off if we hadn’t done that,” he said.

Still, McBroom said, absorbing the higher energy costs sometimes must be accomplished by number-crunching and shifting money from somewhere else.

“Energy is not a small part of our entire budget,” he said. “Every aspect of our business has to run tighter because of higher energy costs. We just have to look internally at where we can scale back, or where we have to price things. It’s one of those things you have very little control over.”

Dick Walker, a program manager for commercial energy-efficiency programs with MidAmerican Energy Co., said interest has increased significantly over the past few months in his company’s energy-efficiency analyses and rebate programs for businesses.

“Certainly, with high natural gas prices, the interest in these kinds of assistance programs has gone up tremendously,” Walker said. “Over the past three or four months, we’ve had probably double the requests as we had last year with our programs where we help customers identify things they could do to save energy, especially natural gas.”

For small businesses, MidAmerican offers BusinessCheck, a free onsite energy audit that includes recommendations on how business owners can reduce their energy bills. Walker said this program has become popular because it helps business owners who might not have the technical expertise or time to figure out what they can do to make their office or commercial buildings more energy efficient.

“It helps educate the business owners on their options, and kind of wakes them up and gets them working on these things they’ve been putting off,” he said.

Similar to the company’s program for homeowners, the BusinessCheck energy auditor will install some free energy-efficient equipment during the visit. These devices range from motion sensors in break rooms or public areas to turn off overhead lighting when nobody is using the room to power sprayers in restaurant kitchens that use a third as much water as a normal sprayer.

“These are demonstration products that show the business owner simple changes they can make to save energy,” Walker said. “Our hope is that they will take the initiative to make these improvements throughout the business once they see how easy it can be.”

For medium-sized to large business, MidAmerican offers a program called Efficiency Partners. It expands on the program offered to smaller businesses with a diagnostic session with management to evaluate the company’s energy usage. Walker said the energy audit is a little more comprehensive than BusinessCheck, and the program encourages the organization to establish a long-term energy improvement plan.

After a BusinessCheck from MidAmerican this winter, Mike Harmon, co-owner of America’s Best Apparel Inc. a screenprinting company in West Des Moines, plans install new heating and cooling equipment at his production facility. He’s also considering ordering new insulation this year for his company’s 33-year-old building and making other updates to improve energy efficiency.

Harmon said he plans to replace the air conditioner and two heaters in the production area. After his company’s busy season from March to September, he might also have the insulation replaced. MidAmerican told him it would cover up to 40 percent of the cost of the insulation, if his rebate application is approved. He plans to also apply for rebates on the heating and cooling equipment before he buys it.

“We have to have natural gas for our business, because the dryers that we use to cure the inks run on it,” Harmon said. “We’ve been pretty lucky so far that we haven’t had a horrendously cold winter, so our utility bills haven’t been as high as they could have been. But since it’s unlikely that natural gas prices will be going down in the horizon, we’re hoping that retrofitting our building will help us save on energy costs.”