Size matters: how a small grant is helping businesses cut carbon and costs

Lynn Conybear, managing director, and co-founder of Imagine The Fun, has always wanted to put the environment at the heart of her business.

“The whole ethos of the business has always been environment friendly,” she says.

But mural aside, turning a cavernous industrial warehouse built over three decades ago into a low carbon building was never going to be easy. And eight years later, Conybear is still trying to achieve her green goal – and it’s not been easy. 

“We’ve tried to see if we can get any grants for recycling rainwater or to install solar energy, for example. But we haven’t been able to,” says Conybear. “We couldn’t even get cardboard recycled when we first opened the play centre.”

Like so many small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs), Imagine The Fun has no profit margins to speak of and so investing in energy and resource efficiency measures without outside help is a tall order. The company turns over £670,000 a year, but its overheads are “very high”, says Conybear, who employs around 30 full time equivalent staff.

Imagine The Fun has, however, recently successfully applied for an ‘Energy Grant 500’ through its regional business advice centre Business Link. These grants, according to Erica Russell, market development manager, Sustainable Business, at the southeast arm of the Government-funded business advice agency, are proving increasingly popular because they are relatively easy and straightforward to apply for.

“The energy grant provides up to £500 for any energy saving project, and although it’s not an open cheque book, it is not about being onerous,” she explains.

The grant is funded by the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), through the European Regional Development Fund, and was first launched as a pilot scheme in March 2009. The scheme proved successful enough in the first six months that in September it was extended until 2011. To date 195 applications have been approved and SEEDA estimates the grants have saved 39 tonnes of carbon on average per business a year and £663 per business annually in energy costs.

Russell says some companies have applied for as little as £150 of grant funding, while others have applied for the full £500 for projects costing several thousands of pounds.

“What’s been very interesting is that many businesses have put in their own money as well – they see it as something they would like to do,” she explains.

There have also been a whole range of different types of businesses applying for funding.

One applicant was a pub that spent £4500 in total on upgrading 200 light bulbs to energy efficient ones, plus four automatic lighting controls and balancing valves.

Another was a charity that installed eight solar tubes at a cost of £5049, while a golf club spent £699 in total on installing power saving shower heads.

David Wyatt, director of The Lime Leaf, a restaurant in Basingstoke, spent £4544 on installing a heat pump for heating and ventilation in his Grade II-listed building. “The £500 was very helpful and we put in our proposal and got the grant relatively easily,” he says.

According to Russell, while the grant is fairly modest, it is popular because the application is straightforward and can be approved within days. “There is a checklist, but you don’t have to prove the amount of carbon savings you will generate by installing the energy saving technology, for example,” she explains. This is the case with the Carbon Trust’s interest free loans, where the threshold has recently been reduced from £5000 to £3000.

But there is still room for improvement.

Wyatt is grateful for the funding he has received, but in retrospect he wishes he’d received some objective advice about which heat source pump to invest in. As it is, he opted for the cheapest installation quote but is worried the system may not be up to the job (he’s had to use his central heating system as back up this winter).

There have also been problems reported with energy monitors loaned for free under the Energy Grant 500 scheme. A number of grant applicants say the monitors either didn’t fit their systems or the readings they got from them were inaccurate.

But Russell says the grants are helping to change behaviour. “I see more and more businesses taking on this agenda and these are companies where there is not a big corporate culture where you have a set of requirements laid down. These are small businesses,” she says.