I’ve heard that the Carbon Trust is offering to help small and medium-sized retailers cut their energy bills. Can you tell me more about what it involves?
The aim of the Carbon Trust’s Big Business Refit is to help small businesses become greener and more cost-efficient in one fell swoop. It is offering both practical advice and financial support in the form of unsecured interest-free loans so that businesses can replace their old equipment – such as refrigeration, lighting and heating – with newer, more energy efficient models.
The loans range from between £3,000 and £400,000 and there is a total of £100m available. These loans are designed to pay for themselves through direct energy savings. In this way, once the loan is repaid, savings go straight to the bottom line.
In addition, small and medium-sized retail businesses will also be able to benefit from free energy saving assessments, conducted by a Carbon Trust expert. They will provide a tailored plan that helps identify specific equipment that is the least energy efficient and identify potential savings. There are also opportunities to claim tax relief against any capital investment if a business replaces old heating equipment with a radiant heating system.
Carbon Trust chief executive Tom Delay says the programme helps to “break the deadlock” that businesses are in because of the difficulty in obtaining credit in the current climate.
He adds: “Retailers are realising that for every month they make do and mend with old, inefficient equipment, they are wasting more cash on unnecessarily high energy bills.”
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