How can businesses reduce their carbon footprint?

Low Carbon Across the South and East provides grants to help businesses reduce their carbon footprint – as well as those of their supply chains – through developing and promoting green goods and services.

ENERGY REDUCTION There are many ways to reduce the footprint of day-to-day operations; replacing inefficient lighting is an obvious low-cost step that offers a high return in terms of savings. LoCASE has supported many SMEs to change from old style strip lighting to LED systems which can result in 60-80% savings. The bigger the building, the longer the hours’ use, bigger the savings could be. We’ve recently supported a football club to replace their floodlights, helping them to reduce their energy costs and improve their facilities whilst tackling their carbon footprint.

Reducing heating costs has the same challenges. For instance, using infrared heaters, which are more efficient than using gas or electric portable heaters will help, as will replacing gas boilers and adding zoning controls. Air or ground source heat pumps work well in suitably insulated buildings to provide greater energy savings than using older gas boilers.

Moving your fleet to electric vehicles can also provide substantial savings. LoCASE has supported an SME to replace a diesel van with two e-cargo bikes, saving thousands of pounds each year in fuel costs. Other SMEs are buying second-hand electric cars, vans and taxis to reduce their costs and drive down their environmental impact.

We are also seeing high demand to support solar projects for sports clubs, charities and other businesses to reduce the day-to-day use, while looking to reduce the cost of grid supplied electricity, with some also using battery storage to support energy use in the evenings. With grant funding reducing the overall projects cost, the return on investment can be made in just a few years. With the further increases in energy costs expected again in the Autumn, more savings can be expected.

The Low Carbon Across the South and East Programme has been funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

It is a partnership between the Kent County Council, Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, East Sussex County Council, Essex County Council, Isle of Wight Council, Portsmouth City Council, Rushmoor Borough Council, Southampton City Council, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, Surrey County Council, Test Valley Borough Council, Thurrock Council, University of Brighton, the University of Portsmouth, West Sussex County Council, and Winchester City Council.

GREEN GOODS AND SERVICES LoCASE also provides funding to help promote green goods and services, whether that be electricians promoting heat pumps or solar installations, double glazers promoting increased energy savings in their products or those working to develop goods that need extra R&D, or marketing support to help promote a new product launch. STEPS TO ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT – A FREE RESOURCE The aim of this free business support is to facilitate the reduction of carbon emissions by providing training, tools and resources to assist SMEs to implement an environmental management system or plan.

This is delivered by the LoCASE partnership across three levels: Blue, Silver and Gold. Each SME completes a stage, moves on to the next level and achieves accreditation.