The Green Economy: Energy efficiency offers opportunities

THE drive to improve energy efficiency offers as many opportunities for businesses as the move to new generation methods.

That is one of the key messages to emerge from The Green Economy, a new supplement by TheBusinessDesk.com in partnership with DLA Piper.

While Yorkshire is forecast to be a hub for green energy generation, experts point out there are also huge opportunities for companies that can devise new working methods and technologies that cut energy use.

Teresa Hitchcock, DLA Piper’’s UK head of safety, health and environment, says: ““One of the really important things that a lot of people are missing is the opportunity for green start-up businesses and add-ons in relation to energy efficiency.

““Businesses, and particularly in this region, heavy metal bashers, waste so much energy in heat loss. They are currently unable to avoid this because of the degree
to which they have to heat metal and the temperature it has to achieve – and then in the cooling down all that heat is lost.

“The managing directors of large forging companies are crying out for a way to harness that heat. If the technology could be retrofitted it would make a difference immediately.”

Energy efficiency is a central part of the work of a new green energy panel launched by the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership chaired by WYG chief executive Paul Hamer.

“If we are trying to stimulate an economy –– the key drivers for that are about economic growth and creating employment.

“Carbon and energy efficiency has in the past sat alongside that but it has not been integrated. What we are doing now is bringing the debate of how we get sector growth while minimising carbon too,” he says.

To read more features in this series and to download the free supplement click here.