Business calls for greater simplicity in accessing low carbon economy

TheBusinessDesk.com, in partnership with Drax and DLA Piper, has examined the challenges and opportunities that the low carbon economy presents for Yorkshire.

Click here to download the supplement.

THE CBI director-general John Cridland summoned up the philosopher Jeremy Bentham to help him explain one of the difficulties about the low carbon economy.

Setting out the view and priorities of business as he delivered the annual sustainability lecture at University College London, Cridland said: “Bentham once said, ‘happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about’. One can take a similar sentiment when it comes to climate change and sustainability.

“Issues which are fundamental to all of our futures – but whose importance sometimes gets lost in a labyrinth of institutions, agreements and acronyms.”

He called for the framework for energy efficiency to be simplified for companies, saying business were being inhibited by it being too difficult.

He added: “Many businesses are trying to invest in efficiency – only to hit a wall of three-letter acronyms which stops them in their tracks. we urgently need to simplify the framework, making it ‘business friendly’ and unlocking investment.”

Simplicity was a word the resonated around the table during the low carbon economy discussion.

“We see a lot of customers in the SME market and simplicity is often the key,” said Russell Reading, structured contracts manager at GdF Suez.

“For customers who are spending millions of pounds on energy it makes sense to put time and energy into what exactly you do and understanding it. If you are running a small local business, the utility is exactly that, and you have got a dozen other things you really want to think about a lot more than that.

“Whatever we do, we need to make it simpler and easier to access.”

Heat networks are one potential solution, and Sheffield has a large district heating network which was established in 1988 and is judged to save more than 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. It is connected to more than 140 buildings, including blocks of flats, offices and Sheffield City Hall, providing a low carbon energy source that is generated in a central location, converted to hot water and pumped through a network of 44km of underground pipes.

It is one of the leading examples of a heat network, but although about half of the heat demand in the UK is in areas with sufficient density of users to make schemes viable, they are responsible for only about 2% of the energy produced.

Matthew Hill, director at Leeds Environmental design Associates, said: “we did a recent project with a little housing authority that managed to get some eco-funding for taking a large block of very poorly insulated flats off electricity, heating and providing affordable warmth through the installation of a new biomass community heating system, which we did. It was very successful, but as we know, that ecofunding has now dropped away.

“A lot of organisation and businesses are keen to get into biomass, but with the uncertainty, both long term and short term, it is stuttering.”

Reading added: “It’s interesting that you mentioned that sort of network. Potentially one of the future developments is a community biomass scheme.

“We are seeing more occasions where people are taking opportunities for almost self-supply, which is great if you have got an enormous facility and space to put something up. But the reality is that not everyone has got that, so that then leads to the question: ‘how do you trickle it down with smarter networks?’.

“Do you have a basket of businesses – do you start with a business park or similar? – and say that the asset isn’t on the park but you can see it, and how do you move it from that into another community that is linked by something else?”

There are opportunities, as Energy Innovation and Knowledge Exchange director Jon Price identified, but also one problem.

“Take Leeds for example, we could start off with something quite simple on a city scale,” he said. “we have got a big university up here, a big hospital – but there’s no heat network because no-one is going to pay for the pipe.”

Click here to sign up to receive our new South West business news...
Close