Introduction

This project involved a consortium of consultancy organisations working closely with 14 organisations, co-located on a business park, to identify CO2 reduction opportunities.
Objectives and target audience
The primary aim for the project was to demonstrate how a range of organisations within a business park could be engaged and supported in reducing their CO2 emissions.

Fourteen businesses, both large and small, covering retail, leisure, manufacturing and the food sector, were engaged at the flagship Trafford Park business park.  Engagement focused on top-level buy-in with more involved work with facilities managers.

Financial Resources and Partners involved

Funding for the project was provided via sponsorship from npower business (£25k), from contributions from the participants themselves (£13k total), Carbon Trust for energy audits and Groundwork via a separate environmental support project.

Process

The initial workshop, held at the end on November 2006, provided the participants with an opportunity to meet each other and describe their activities.  The participants were then given details of the Carbon Footprint Tool, Carbon Trust audits and the assistance available from npower and Groundwork.  An outline of the project programme and what was expected of the participants was provided.

At the subsequent three workshops, equipment suppliers were invited to attend to present and demonstrate their systems to the participants.  The technologies covered were selected to be of interest to most, if not all, of the participants.  Wherever possible, the equipment suppliers were NW companies in order to support the local sustainable energy supply chain.

Presentations were also given on the Trafford Centre Car Sharing Scheme and Staff Awareness.  The final workshop was held at Kellogg’s, who gave a presentation on their carbon reduction activities.  It was interesting for the smaller companies to see from this what could be achieved by ‘doing the simple things well’ rather than simply relying on high-tech solutions.

Results

In order to start to tackle the internal energy usage, energy efficiency audits were organised for the companies which were eligible for Carbon Trust support.  On average these showed potential savings in energy costs and CO2 emissions of 16% with a payback of only 9 months.  These figures included estimates of savings resulting from improved monitoring of energy use and staff awareness.

Areas for saving which were common to most of the sites included:-

• Improved Energy Monitoring & Targeting
• Staff Awareness
• Lighting  – new technologies; controls
• Variable Speed Drives – e.g.  on pumps & fans
• Commuting
• Waste Issues – segregation & collection

Six of the fourteen companies engaged took full advantage of the opportunities of the project and went on to implement CO2 reduction initiatives and work to embed energy saving as an integral part of their business planning processes.

Critical Success Factors / Challenges

Key lessons learned:-

• It is difficult to engage small companies in energy saving and carbon reduction initiatives (though there are signs that this may be changing with all the publicity about climate change and supply chain pressures to do more to reduce carbon emissions).
• Once engaged, a committed project champion is essential.  It is very clear from the project that progress stalled or ceased altogether where a project champion left the company or was moved to other duties.  This also highlights the importance of senior management commitment to ensure that progress is maintained even when personnel move on.
• Small companies can make significant energy (and CO2) savings from projects with very short paybacks – 20% savings with a payback of one year is not unusual.  This message has been around for at least 30 years but it remains extraordinarily difficult to realise these savings on a large scale – a challenge which is still being faced at a national level.
• The savings come from a number of relatively small projects, including better monitoring of energy use and improved staff awareness.  This is one of the main factors hindering achievement of the potential savings (because it needs time, which is a commodity that small companies are always short of).  It also makes it very difficult for companies such as npower to provide a cost-effective, ‘packaged’ solution to identify and implement the savings opportunities.