Green Energy - A Boost for Your Businesses

There are £550m of Government loans available to businesses as a new initiative to get business to conserve energy and use it more efficiently. This is all due to a deal announced yesterday between Siemens and the Carbon Trust.

The loans will be provided by Siemens Financial Services in the UK, with the Carbon Trust assessing the cost, energy and carbon savings of the plans proposed by companies. The Carbon Trust anticipates it will generate lifetime energy cost savings of £1bn and 5.5m tonnes of carbon, which is fairly impressive!

The scheme will be available from 4th April 2011 and any energy equipment is eligible as long as it meets the scheme's energy-saving criteria. This replaces the current scheme through which the Carbon Trust made interest-free loans of up to £250,000 each to small to medium-sized enterprises for energy efficiency ends later this month on 28 March.

The loans will be made at commercial rates for periods of one to seven years and sums from £1,000 to several hundred thousand pounds.

Chris Whitelock of Pure renewables says: "This is a very welcome initiative at a time when government-backed 'green schemes' are becoming more diluted with every passing day.  Previous Carbon Trust industry loan arrangements have been difficult to implement with eligibility being limited to unrealistic payback timescales on renewable systems of just 4 years.  Hopefully this new scheme will broaden the application of renewables in the industrial sector to a level which will actually make a tangible difference to both energy costs and carbon emissions. At last, it looks like we're getting something with substance."