Beat the credit crunch - free energy audit!

Reducing the amount of carbon you emit is one of the fastest, most effective ways to save your business money and reduce your carbon footprint. You don’t need to make major alterations to see the difference. The right combination of small changes, many costing nothing, can reduce your energy bills by thousands of pounds.

Treesponsibility have teamed up with Hebden Bridge Transition Town to offer local businesses free energy audits. Funded by Yorkshire Forward, this 20 month project also provide each business with a follow-up report offering practical advice on how to reduce costs in a tough economic climate through energy saving measures. The report also gives advice on how to improve resource efficiency, minimize emissions and reduce energy dependency.

If you are a local business which would benefit from an advice visit, please email Natja on treesponsibility@yahoo.co.uk or call 07535617094.

Business energy audits: Becoming more efficiently unsustainable?
In February 2009 a close working relationship between Treesponsibility and the Hebden Bridge Transition Town group was established in the form of a 20 month job contract for a Transition Support Worker to provide free energy audits and advice to 99 local businesses.

As Hebden Bridge is a town that prides itself on its many independent shops and businesses, and is the home town of the Transition group and Treesponsibility, it was a natural starting point for the energy audits. Since the project started one year ago 50 businesses have been surveyed.

The basic premise of the energy survey is that by implementing simple energy saving initiatives, businesses will reduce their carbon emissions and carbon footprint, and thereby save money and the environment. All businesses surveyed thus far provide much needed jobs for local people, there are no 'big, bad corporations' and all business owners are open to make the necessary changes to lower their carbon footprint.

The surveys have all uncovered areas where businesses can become more efficient. In the follow-up reports simple action points have been outlined, and if followed, businesses can save money. So far so good, but is it all that easy? Can we reduce the carbon emissions of the UK's business sector simply by going from business to business providing energy saving advice?

Actually, becoming more energy efficient doesn't necessarily mean an energy saving or a reduction of carbon emissions, in fact, historically the opposite happens. What we have seen again and again is that greater efficiency translates into greater consumption. This is called the 'Jevons Paradox'.

For example, BBC recently ran an article on the enormous amount of food wasted in the UK each year. It claimed that up to a third of the food grown for humans in the UK was discarded. Considering that about one fifth of greenhouse-gas emissions are a direct result of food production, to throw a third away is very significant. If I decided to become a lot more efficient and not waste any food, I could cut my food bill and the associated CO2 emissions by one third. But what would I do with those savings? Hmm… buy a new smoothie machine, or maybe take a weekend shopping break in New York?

The point is that without showing some constraint, energy efficiency just frees up resources to consume even more. So how does that relate to the energy audits we are offering as part of our business support? It means that as well as providing action points to make each business more energy efficient, advice on how to use the energy (money) saved is equally important. Because if the (money) energy saved is just used to buy more unnecessary consumer goods, it actually means that we help businesses become more efficiently unsustainable. In the current scenario of business as usual, technofixes and energy efficiency as solutions to climate change, it's important that we are all aware that these are more like smokescreens than real solutions.. In fact, the solutions are far simpler. To save the future of our planet we have to use less, spend less and then as a bonus we can work less. For more on the Jevons Paradox see: http://www.workersoftheworldrelax.org

A greener deal: electricity
Conventional or 'brown' electricity is the biggest single cause of climate change in the UK, responsible for over 30% of our CO2 emissions, it's therefore obvious that if we change how electricity is made, it can make a real difference to fighting climate change. Ecotricity is a not for dividend UK company that for every pound the customer spends on electricity, spend another pound building new sources of green electricity.

Businesses that have an energy audit done will be offered a 5% discount to switch to Ecotricity. For more information see www.ecotricity.co.uk.

Do you want an energy audit for your business? email treesponsibility@yahoo.co.uk or
mobile 07535617094.