The Carbon Trust today announced that it has awarded its first interest-free loan of £500,000, the maximum amount that can be offered under the government-backed company’s Big Business Refit energy efficiency loan scheme.

The loan was provided to Bedford-based IT support company Blue Chip and has allowed the firm to install energy efficient evaporative cooling technology at its new five-acre datacentre site.

Brian Meredith, managing director at the company, said the cooling technology would cut indirect electricity use within the datacentre by 60 per cent, saving it £100,000 a year and allowing it to repay the loan within four years.

“The decision to take out the maximum loan amount was a no-brainer for us,” he said, adding that the application process had been straightforward, with the loan being processed and approved within two weeks.

The news came as the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) launched a campaign designed to encourage its members to take advantage of the Carbon Trust loan scheme.

Under the scheme, any small and medium-sized business that either has a turnover of less than £50m, or spends less than £500,000 a year on electricity and as a result is not eligible for the government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme, can qualify for interest-free loans of between £3,000 and £500,000.

The unsecured loans have to be invested in energy efficient equipment that has been approved by the Carbon Trust and must be repaid over four years.

“By replacing old, inefficient equipment, firms can dramatically cut costs and in many cases, improve productivity by between 20 and 30 per cent,” said David Frost, BCC director general. “For businesses that rely on energy-intensive equipment, borrowing big from the Carbon Trust to refit with energy-saving equipment can really pay off.”

The loans are also supported by a free energy efficiency assessment from the Carbon Trust, designed to help companies work out the areas where they can achieve the greatest savings. “We calculate how much a company will save from making the investment in new equipment, so they can make an informed investment choice based on realistic, projected savings,” explained Carbon Trust chief executive Tom Delay.

Alan Beresford, managing director of EcoCooling, which provided cooling technology to Blue Chip, said that IT companies in particular should take advantage of the Carbon Trust scheme. “Overcooling is one of the main causes of energy wastage in datacentres, server rooms and IT equipment,” he said. “The Carbon Trust’s interest-free loan scheme is an obvious way for many organisations to fund the installation of evaporative cooling.”

According to the Carbon Trust, more than 1,000 firms have borrowed £46m since the scheme was launched last April, delivering annual cost and carbon savings of £17.2m and 100,000 tonnes respectively. It said that companies taking out loans typically cut energy bills by between £14,000 and £130,000 a year.

Source James Murray, BusinessGreen, 12 Feb 2010
www.businessgreen.com

Now is the time, we know what to do and we know how to do it: cut our carbon by 10%.

Key facts:-
10:10 is a national drive to cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 10% during 2010. Anyone can sign up to 10:10, from ordinary people, schools and hospitals to councils and government departments, from corner
shops to high street banks and from scout troops to premiere league football clubs.
By joining 10:10, you’re making a commitment to try your best to cut your own emissions by 10%, as part of a wider national effort to significantly reduce our output of greenhouse gasses in line with what the scientists say is needed.

“Nobody is going to complain if you find you can’t cut the whole 10%. Every percent counts and 10:10 will celebrate any cuts you manage to make in your emissions.”

The major energy suppliers have agreed to help everyone to meet their 10:10 commitment by working out the difference between this year’s energy use and last year’s. They’ll display this information on
customers’ bills in way that’s simple and easy to understand.

William Martin Energy can easily acheive a 10% carbon reduction in your organisation by 2010. It really is simple and will save your organisation money – potentially lots of money.

“To date our record is reducing a clients carbon emissions by 30% and their energy costs by 65% – all in just 3 months. It cost the client nothing as the Carbon Trust Energy Efficiency Loan covered the cost of the works entirely. In my mind aiming for a simple to acheive, non-compliance based target such as 10:10 has to be good for any organisations public image, and more importantly in these times, their bottom line.” says Jeremy Davies a Director of William Martin Energy

“In our own offices we are quiet efficient already but we have set a target to make a reduction of 30% in our carbon emissions by 2010 based on 2008/9 levels.” Davies says

10:10 is a project from the team behind the climate blockbuster The Age of Stupid. Individuals and organisations can sign up on the 10:10 website at any time until mid 2010.
The campaign launched from Tate Modern on September 1st 2009, and within three days had signed up over 10,000 people, 400 businesses, and the leaders of all three major political parties to the 10:10
pledge.

Contact William Martin Energy to find out how your organisation can acheive 10:10 today!

Britain could become a booming market for solar power from next year when the UK introduces a support system used successfully by dozens of other countries.

Last week 240 MPs signed a parliamentary motion supporting the mass rollout of solar photovoltaic (PV) power. The support was the biggest of any such motion introduced in this parliament.

Colin Challen MP, who tabled the motion, said: “There is an enormous opportunity to drive forward this technology through the forthcoming feed-in tariffs.”

Feed-in tariffs (FITs) work by paying a guaranteed, above-market price for any electricity fed into the grid for a period of 20-25 years. They have been designed to offer returns close to 10%, thereby reducing payback times for any household investing in a PV system to 10 years or less.

Similar tariffs have boosted solar power in the 50-odd countries that have introduced them in the past decade, in turn promoting production of PV panels and pushing down prices to the extent that PV will not need subsidies for much longer.

“FITs have been very effective at improving take-up,” Kenichiro Wakisaka, senior manager at the Japanese electronics group and PV maker Sanyo, said at the recent Intersolar trade fair in Munich. “Japan has reintroduced one and the market there will double at least. The same will happen in the UK and we will increase our allocation to the UK market.”

“We are very excited about this,” said Clive Collison, head of Action South Facing, a solar system installer based in Hertfordshire. “We are now getting all sorts of inquiries from companies, local authorites and individuals. But nothing is guaranteed. We don’t know the level it will be set at yet and the big energy companies are still lobbying against it.”

Jerermy Leggett, chairman of the British solar group Solar Century, says the British market has tremendous potential but is also concerned that some officials at the Department for Energy and Climate Change may stall the introduction of the FIT at the behest of groups arguing that nuclear power is the answer.

“If so, UK plc will essentially have to sit and watch as other countries create jobs, tax income and energy security in one of the fastest-growing industries within the emerging green industrial revolution.”

The British market, along with those of China, Japan and the United States, which have also recently announced plans for feed-in tariffs and other forms of support, offers a bright future for the solar industry. After several years of meteoric growth, it has been laid low this year by the credit crunch and a change to Spain’s feed-in tariff that has reduced demand in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets.

The global financial crisis has hit the industry hard because its costs are high and it has had trouble accessing bank financing. This has forced companies to rein in production and cut their prices in a bid to maintain their growth.

At the same time the supply of silicon, from which PV panels are made, has finally caught up with, and overtaken, demand, giving another nudge down to prices – to the benefit of consumers.

“Prices to end-users are down about 16% this year,” says Georg Salvamoser, head of the German solar industry association, BSW. “This is hard for firms’ margins but it does move us an important step towards making solar energy cheaper.”

He predicts that the number of projects installed in Germany – Europe’s biggest market – will grow this year, although more slowly than in recent years. “Last year we installed 1.5 gigawatts peak [GWp] of PV in Germany and this year I think there will be slightly more,” he said.

That total is equivalent to the power produced from about two conventional coal or gas power stations. PV in Germany accounts for about 1% of total electricity production but the country hopes to boost that to 12% by 2020 and 25% by 2030.

Stefan Dietrich, spokesman for Q-Cells – the world’s largest producer of silicon PV cells – said prices had tumbled 20% this year. “Things have changed a lot. It’s a buyer’s market right now. But in the short term that is good because it will help the industry reach grid parity.”

“Grid parity” – the point at which PV electricity is as cheap as that coming from conventional power stations – is the PV industry’s holy grail. It depends on how sunny a country is and the cost of its electricity.

Dietrich thinks Italy will be the first country in Europe to hit grid parity – possibly as soon as next year. Other candidates are Hawaii and California, where grid electricity is expensive. Many other countries, including Britain, will achieve parity within three to five years, say experts.

Once that happens, demand is potentially infinite. Solar PV also has the advantage that, once installed, the buyer is protected from rising oil and gas prices for several decades.

Industry analysts iSuppli forecast in a recent report that worldwide PV installation would tumble by a third this year to about 3.5GWp. But it expects growth to explode again from 2011, reaching 25GWp annually by 2013 and giving the industry an annual turnover of nearly $100bn.

But Jerry Stokes, vice-president for strategy at Chinese group Suntech – the world’s biggest maker of PV panels – says life has got tougher.

“The market is very challenging now and there is a flight to quality going on,” he says. “Project developers and investors are very cautious about what they spend their money on.

“It’s not just about cost per watt but the number of kilowatt-hours you will get over the lifetime of a project, 20 years and more. And we are confident that we are in front in the race to grid parity – we don’t want to live off government subsidies any more.”

Even the greenest of businesses are unlikely to be able to make informed choices about the energy efficiency of the premises they buy or rent right now, according to new research published by National Energy Services (NES). In a mystery shopping exercise to check on compliance with European and UK law relating to the energy efficiency of buildings in the commercial property sector, NES discovered that more than 80% of agents it spoke to were unable to provide the mandatory EPC for the offices or shops they were marketing for sale or rent.

These certificates are a critical part of the Government’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and energy bills for businesses. 88 out of 108 agents (81%) failed to provide an EPC. Almost half of these agents (47%, or 41 agents) said they believed the certificate was not necessary, or just could not give an explanation about why no EPC was available.

NES, which runs the NHER accreditation scheme, the UK’s largest accreditation scheme for EPCs, is calling for Government to get rid of the anomalies between the commercial property sector and the residential sector where EPCs are much more readily available.

Austin Baggett, deputy managing director of NES, said: “The EPC is not just any piece of paper. It’s now required by law to inform potential buyers or tenants about the energy performance of a building, so that they can consider energy efficiency as part of their investment or business decision to buy or occupy that building.

“EPCs are a great vehicle to deliver the UK’s carbon reduction plans. We have all the infrastructure in place, including thousands of qualified energy assessors ready to provide these certificates at short notice. But with 80% of commercial buildings not complying with the regulations, the potential for carbon and financial savings by business is seriously undermined.

“The display of the EPC rating should be mandatory on all commercial building particulars used by agents to market the building. This is already in place for the sale of homes, and it brings real transparency and help to consumers. In this way, the industry can almost police itself. But this does not reduce the importance of Trading Standard Officers actually going out and checking on compliance and taking action where necessary- something that they are clearly not doing at the moment.”

To read a full copy of the report, go to:

 www.nher.co.uk 

To read more about ‘good and bad EPC’s’ click here:>

And while many sources of indoor air are fairly obvious and well-known — second-hand smoke, carbon monoxide and radon, to name the most prominent, and deadly — there are more insidious, secret sources of pollution that any concerned homeowner or parent should consider. Below are some of the most surprising.

For tips on reducing indoor air pollution from these and other sources, see 25 Indoor Air Quality Tips from the American Lung Association.

Writing in his new book, Living Within Our Means, Mr Porritt argues that politicians now have a unique opportunity to rebuild economies in a more sustainable way.

But, he continues, if the problems are ignored it could lead to a ‘perfect storm’ as accelerating climate change and financial meltdown collide.

“Unless we put the imperative of living within our means, both financially and environmentally, absolutely at the heart of everything we do to dig ourselves out of this recession, then any economic reprieve that we enjoy at the end of that time will be as bittersweet as it will be short-lived,” writes Mr Porritt, founder director of sustainable development charity Forum for the Future and chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission.

“Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that managed to rescue the global banking system even as we allowed the natural world to collapse around us?”

Porritt argues that few politicians grasp the scale of the task ahead.

Although he welcomes the UK’s Climate Change Act, he warns that there is no serious indicator that the Government is using the current crisis to rethink the way we live and the way we create wealth.

He sets out in detail how “Anglo-American deregulated, debt-driven, growth-at-all-costs capitalism” is responsible not only for the near-collapse of the global banking system but also the “near-imminent collapse of the ecological systems on which we all depend.”

Living Within Our Means follows Mr Porritt’s acclaimed book Capitalism As If The World Matters.

Click here to purchase Jonathan Porritts books from the Amazon.co.uk website