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When Renewables Make Business Sense

3rd July 2014

The case for renewables is often the subject of much debate, but there are certain sectors for which it clearly makes good business sense whether it’s due to a company’s location and proximity to resources or simply because of their high energy use, explains Stephen Davies, from renewable specialists, TGE Group.

For businesses with large roof spaces or south facing roofs, there is clearly a great case for commercial rooftop solar projects.  It’s been estimated that there’s 250,000 hectares of south facing commercial roofs in the UK, constituting massive potential for solar PV within this sector.

For businesses that have a heavy dependency on energy, there can be no dispute that renewables offer unrivalled opportunities, particularly for businesses that can make direct use of any energy generated within the business.  Installing renewables not only reduces costs and brings double digit returns on investment but it also protects a business against future energy price hikes.

Furthermore, some businesses may have environmental resources nearby which can make their renewable systems more efficient, such as a lake or water for water source heat pumps or privately owned woodlands or waste straw that may provide low cost fuel for biomass boilers.

The nature of some businesses makes them ideally suited to renewables.  Organisations such as schools, care homes, hospitals, sports centres and residential blocks all have significant hot water and heat requirements.  The energy requirements of factories, warehouses and farms will depend on their sector with refrigeration, lighting and machinery all being a heavy power drains.

 Let’s also not forget that almost all renewable heat applications or solar projects are incentivised to encourage take up by effectively paying organisations for every unit of heat or energy produced.  To add to this, there’s also heaps of funding to help businesses with any initial installation costs. 

The only consideration businesses need to have is that it’s unlikely that the available funding and incentive payments will last forever.  Don’t let the opportunity slip, make the most of your opportunities.