VIDEO: Thandi – ‘cut carbon and save £43m’

BUSINESSES in Birmingham have been advised to implement energy-saving programmes as quickly as possible – not just for the environmental benefits they will bring but the improvements they will deliver to their bottom line.

Kicking off its Best Advice campaign in the city, the Carbon Trust said if eligible businesses across Birmingham signed up to its free Carbon Survey they could collectively save £43m in energy costs and 1.8m tonnes of carbon a year.

If all eligible businesses across the West Midlands signed up, the saving is estimated at more than £270m a year.

The Carbon Survey, available free to all businesses that spend between £50,000 and £3m on energy each year, provides the services of an energy expert on site and a tailored energy-saving action plan.

It typically identifies potential savings on energy costs of between 20% and 30%.

To help promote the campaign in Birmingham, the trust has recruited NEC Group chief executive Paul Thandi as its carbon ambassador.

By implementing the advice of the trust his group has been able to trim more than £300,000 from its operating costs.

This equates to a saving of 5,788 tonnes of carbon a year – equivalent to:
•    1.6m average car miles
•    1,797 flights from Birmingham to New York
•    572 flights from Birmingham to Sydney
•    Enough carbon to fill the Royal Albert Hall five times

Mr Thandi said: “I cannot recommend highly enough the benefits to a business of signing up to the Carbon Survey – it’s the best free advice any business will get this year.”

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He said his own business had taken the advice of the Carbon Trust and made significant carbon and energy savings as a result.

“The NEC Group is an increasingly environmentally-conscious organisation and have a number of initiatives both ongoing and in development to ensure we further drive down our energy usage and meet future targets.”

“To illustrate our success, we’ve recently announced that we have passed the assessment for the Carbon Trust Standard – once again setting the benchmark within the sectors we serve,” he added.

The trust said that prior to launching the campaign it had questioned business leaders across the city and identified that more than half (54%) were worried about hikes in energy bills, and while a third had pledged to reduce their energy costs this year, few had any kind of cohesive strategy for doing so.

Ian Gibson, the trust’s solution project director, said that since 2006, 203 businesses in Birmingham had signed up for a survey and this had resulted in annual savings of £3.2m – equivalent to more than 36,000 tonnes of CO2.

“This proves that the survey works and the more businesses that sign up, the greater the savings will be,” he said.

Companies wanting to sign up have been urged to visit www.thebestadvice.co.uk or ring 01865 885788 for more information and to register.