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Choosing clean energy makes complete commercial sense

Envi­ron­men­tal issues are final­ly high on the agen­da of large cor­po­ra­tions, giv­en the pres­sure from reg­u­la­tors and cus­tomers who want to see green cre­den­tials. Recent doc­u­men­taries cov­er­ing the impact of plas­tics have fur­ther height­ened all con­cerns for the plan­et, includ­ing ener­gy usage.

Small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, have so far lagged some­what in this area, in part owing to time and finan­cial con­straints. Nev­er­the­less, this is chang­ing as they increas­ing­ly recog­nise the oppor­tu­ni­ty to run green­er oper­a­tions to save mon­ey and win loy­al cus­tomers.

Research by the envi­ron­men­tal report­ing char­i­ty CDP shows that busi­ness­es active­ly improv­ing their cli­mat­ic impact secure an 18 per cent high­er return on invest­ment in this area than firms that react late. This is in part due to secur­ing loy­al cus­tomers and cut­ting costs.

“We see a major change in the out­look of small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, dri­ven by the views of their cus­tomers,” says Ran­dall Bowen, sales and com­mer­cial direc­tor at clean ener­gy sup­pli­er Good Ener­gy. Among mil­len­ni­als alone, some 72 per cent are pre­pared to pay more for goods that are envi­ron­men­tal­ly and social­ly respon­si­ble, accord­ing to researchers at Nielsen, and numer­ous cor­po­ra­tions insist on green cre­den­tials from their sup­pli­ers.

Achiev­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty is eas­i­er than ever before, thanks to new tech­nol­o­gy, trends and strate­gies. Sim­ple changes such as installing LED lights can vast­ly cut ener­gy usage, reduc­ing light­ing costs by more than half, and smart meters can also help by encour­ag­ing low­er ener­gy use. Fur­ther down the line, more effi­cient boil­ers and insu­la­tion, and bet­ter cool­ing, can make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence too.

Ener­gy sup­ply plays an equal­ly impor­tant role. Busi­ness­es can choose tru­ly green ener­gy from renew­able sources. Good Ener­gy not only owns its own wind and solar farms, but also buys its ener­gy from more than 1,400 local gen­er­a­tors, com­pris­ing 57 per cent wind, 20 per cent bio­gen­er­a­tion, 18 per cent solar and 5 per cent hydro. Its gas is ful­ly car­bon off­set and increas­ing­ly com­posed of bio methane.

But across the broad­er ener­gy mar­ket, the sources of pow­er are less trans­par­ent, and cus­tomers must buy care­ful­ly, says Dr Bowen. “There’s a lot of green­wash out there, with ener­gy sup­pli­ers sim­ply buy­ing green cred­its on the mar­ket and apply­ing them to brown, non-renew­able ener­gy. It is legal but uneth­i­cal, mis­lead­ing cus­tomers who want envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly sources.”

Good Ener­gy, which serves 250,000 cus­tomers with renew­able pow­er, helps com­pa­nies suc­ceed with clean elec­tric­i­ty and car­bon-off­set gas

When busi­ness­es do buy the right ener­gy, it is impor­tant to be able to demon­strate this to cus­tomers. Good Ener­gy pro­vides cer­tifi­cates to busi­ness­es using its renew­able pow­er, enabling them to dis­play in store or on the inter­net that they have strong green ener­gy cre­den­tials. “Being able to show this is essen­tial to con­sumer sales and it’s equal­ly impor­tant for busi­ness clients, many of which insist on an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly sup­ply chain,” Dr Bowen adds.

Good Ener­gy already helps organ­i­sa­tions install their own solar pan­els and it now installs bat­tery stor­age, so firms only need take a lim­it­ed amount of ener­gy from the grid. Its work with edu­ca­tion­al char­i­ty the Eden Project, in Corn­wall, enables the organ­i­sa­tion to cap­ture and store solar ener­gy to be used when need­ed.

As busi­ness­es make their ener­gy sources renew­able, they are able to please cus­tomers, improve the bot­tom line, report a low­er car­bon foot­print, cre­ate their own sus­tain­able sup­ply chains and have true flex­i­bil­i­ty on sup­ply by stor­ing some of their own pow­er. Good Ener­gy, which serves 250,000 cus­tomers with renew­able pow­er, helps com­pa­nies suc­ceed with clean elec­tric­i­ty and car­bon-off­set gas.

To find out how to max­imise prof­itabil­i­ty and cus­tomer loy­al­ty by using clean ener­gy please vis­it goodenergy.co.uk