Renewable Energy Tech: It's Time!

Q&A with BITA Member and Platinum Sponsor Stephen Jones (CEO EnviroTech Energy Management)

As energy prices continue to soar, business owners in Ireland and the UK are desperately looking for ways to reduce their energy bills. Investment in the use and delivery of renewable energy is becoming more popular. Solar, wind, battery, air source, biofuels, wave, ground source, thermodynamic and so on are now becoming increasingly relevant for both commercial and domestic applications due to events mostly originating beyond our borders. To gain a greater insight into the topic, we spoke to Stephen Jones from EnviroTech Energy Management who believes there are steps that businesses can take to address this ‘issue of our time’.

What is your background?

I was born and raised in Manchester, and I have spent over 30 years in the renewable energy sector. Having built and sold my own solar farms and worked on the Board of the major utility Centrica, I have seen this growing industry from every angle.

What is your view on the unfolding energy crisis?

We can only control what we can control. The energy crisis that we now face is a result of geopolitical uncertainty, political posturing, and long-term mismanagement of our own energy independence. Combined, this has resulted in the situation that we now all face where energy prices, gas in particular, are going through the roof.

Is this price surge likely to fade soon?

That’s very unlikely. Until the UK and Ireland move to energy independence, we will all be subject to the vagaries of the international marketplace. And we will continue to be forced to manage escalating prices from foreign powers or sources that we have little control over.

What can businesses do now to manage this situation?

As a business owner, several steps are well worth taking now to get ahead of the further price hikes coming our way.

Firstly, I would recommend talking to an energy broker who understands business tariffs and can negotiate a more favourable rate on your behalf. Better still, you could get your trade association or your business peer group to approach a broker on your behalf to negotiate even better tariffs for your businesses. The strength of the many can make a real difference in this situation.

Secondly, your broker will help you review your energy use closely, and to do a full assessment of what equipment in your business is using the most energy and when. Once you understand that, you should talk to a renewable energy technology supplier to figure out what combination of renewable technologies could work best for your business, reduce your energy bills, and move your business toward energy independence. This could be something as simple as putting solar panels on the roof of your building, all the way to implementing a suite of sustainable power solutions such as solar panels on the roof, a battery in the property, infrared heating, thermodynamic hot water, and a EV-charging station outside. EnviroTech can provide all these solutions and more, and these options do make a massive difference not only to EPC ratings, which go up, but also to energy bills, which go down.

In addition, you should look around for renewable energy installation grants that could mitigate the investment costs for these new technologies. With pressure on the Government to reduce carbon emissions, there is a variety of funding avenues to explore that can make for a more seamless transition towards the use of renewable energy in your business than you might expect.

Finally, what is your prediction for the future of sustainable energy solutions?

I’m a plain-speaking chap from the north of England, and the reality is very, very clear to me. Renewable energy solutions are here to stay! The time to sit idly by and let external events dictate how much we pay for our energy is long since passed. So, it’s high time that we take back some degree of control and implement the solutions that I’ve mentioned to mitigate our energy costs and move quickly toward a state of energy independence. The ball is well and truly in our own court, so business leaders need to step up and embrace the new renewable technology available to them.