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Green is good for the environment and for business

Faced with the threat of cli­mate change and a rapid­ly chang­ing ener­gy sys­tem, a grow­ing num­ber of UK busi­ness­es are rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the way they access and use ener­gy.

For Dale Vince, founder of the world’s first green elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny Ecotric­i­ty, the trend for greater effi­cien­cy is one that will dom­i­nate the ener­gy land­scape going for­ward.

“Busi­ness­es are respon­si­ble for one third of the UK’s ener­gy con­sump­tion; switch­ing to green ener­gy is the sin­gle biggest thing a busi­ness can do to fight cli­mate change and is the first step towards becom­ing part of the smart ener­gy sys­tem of the future,” says Mr Vince.

He speaks from expe­ri­ence as Ecotric­i­ty has been at the fore­front of bring­ing green ener­gy to busi­ness­es and homes since its incep­tion in 1995 and boasts a grow­ing port­fo­lio of suc­cess sto­ries. Among Ecotricity’s almost 200,000 cus­tomers across the UK are a grow­ing band of small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es on green ener­gy tar­iffs and large busi­ness­es on bespoke prices.

The company’s vision for the future is to cre­ate a green UK, a place in which eth­i­cal and sus­tain­able busi­ness is the norm. Ecotric­i­ty sup­ply some of the green­est and most eth­i­cal com­pa­nies in the coun­try, what­ev­er their size, includ­ing com­pa­nies such as Uni­ver­sal Music UK, Lush, Friends of the Earth, Green­peace, Enter­prise, Vivi­enne West­wood and Ben Ainslie Rac­ing.

“Tack­ling cli­mate change and reduc­ing the UK’s car­bon emis­sions will be as much about small­er busi­ness­es and house­holds as the big com­pa­nies. The real­i­sa­tion among indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies of all sizes of the role green ener­gy will play in pow­er­ing our future is gath­er­ing momen­tum, and the way we pro­duce and pay for ener­gy is under­go­ing a huge trans­for­ma­tion with smart tech­nol­o­gy,” says Mr Vince.

For many busi­ness­es, the next step towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty, after switch­ing to a green ener­gy sup­pli­er, is to employ ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures. For­ward-think­ing busi­ness­es want even greater con­trol of their ener­gy sup­ply. An increas­ing num­ber are also look­ing to gen­er­ate their own ener­gy on-site, in turn cut­ting costs, increas­ing ener­gy inde­pen­dence and reduc­ing their car­bon foot­print.

As part of its dri­ve to help cus­tomers make ener­gy where they work, Ecotric­i­ty launched its pio­neer­ing Mer­chant Wind Pow­er scheme in 2001, pro­vid­ing ded­i­cat­ed wind­mills built on the indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial sites of some of the country’s biggest house­hold names, such as Sainsbury’s, Miche­lin, B&Q, Ford and, more recent­ly, RSPB and Pinewood Stu­dio, Wales. To date, Ecotric­i­ty has planned and built one in ten of all the UK’s wind projects and its unique approach means it takes full respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­struc­tion, oper­a­tion and main­te­nance of the tur­bines at no cost to the cus­tomer.

“We have an inno­v­a­tive but sim­ple propo­si­tion for busi­ness­es – we pro­vide them with a green ener­gy sup­ply that pro­vides both envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic advan­tages. It allows busi­ness­es to meet both their envi­ron­men­tal goals and ener­gy needs, while demon­strat­ing their green cre­den­tials to their cus­tomers,” says Mr Vince.

“Envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness is on the rise, espe­cial­ly among the younger gen­er­a­tions, and busi­ness­es need to be seen to be tak­ing greater respon­si­bil­i­ty. Not only can ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures boost a business’s bot­tom line and pro­tect them against future ener­gy price fluc­tu­a­tions, they can also increase com­pet­i­tive­ness and attrac­tive­ness as well as offer new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, on-site ener­gy gen­er­a­tion projects across the UK have more than dou­bled in the past four years and Ecotric­i­ty expects this trend to con­tin­ue.

Mr Vince says: “The tra­di­tion­al top-down mod­el has had its day and the future ener­gy sys­tem is one that will be off-grid and decen­tralised.”

The trend towards decen­tralised ener­gy will see the UK under­go some­thing of a green rev­o­lu­tion, with on-site gen­er­a­tion from the wind and the sun, and an explo­sion of smart devices enabling a nation to become more self-suf­fi­cient and less reliant upon glob­al ener­gy mar­kets, he says.

“We are wit­ness­ing the trans­for­ma­tion into an unpar­al­leled mod­ern ener­gy infra­struc­ture, and we and our cus­tomers plan to be at the van­guard of that change,” Mr Vince con­cludes.

To switch your busi­ness to green ener­gy please vis­it business.sales@ecotricity.co.uk