It may not be something that you have heard of but it’s something as a business owner that you may be interested in, as it could help reduce your carbon foot print and help “save the planet”. Running a business we are always looking at ways to make the company more efficient in the processes that we perform as well as the overheads.

We have a big overhead in the company in the ISP and Hosting side of the company and we use a great deal of electricity powering the racks of servers and air conditioning in the server room. I remember when we first moved into our existing building a few years ago and in the first month the electricity company has under estimated our monthly bill by 10,000 units.

The Carbon Trust is now offering Interest Free 0% loans for businesses to implement schemes and projects that will make them more energy efficient. Their mission statement is to:

“…accelerate the move to a low carbon economy now and develop commercial low carbon technologies for the future.”

I’ve been looking into what is being offered so I’ll outline what I have found out so far. The application process for the loans is quite in depth so I haven’t even attempted to draw up a plan for reducing our carbon footprint yet but it’s something on my list of things I need to be considering.

So the loans that are being offered are between £3000 and £400,000 Interest Free, repayable over 4 years. The loan amount is based on your projected CO2 savings which is assessed by the Carbon Trust. To be eligible you need to be a UK company, with less than 250 employees, in the private sector, trading for more than 12 months and with a turnover of less than £43m. The aim of the loan would be to allow for the business to be modernised with new equipment or to get better heating, lighting or insulation. The theory behind the loan is that with the savings that will be made from being more energy efficient, it will effectively pay itself back.

Sounds like a good move by the Carbon Trust to give an easy way for companies, especially those that use a whole load more energy than we do to take the next step to reducing their carbon consumption.