Within the cleantech industry, energy efficiency is the poor relation of other, sexier cleantech concepts like renewable energy schemes. Being frugal will never be as popular as the something-for-nothing image enjoyed by technologies that use wind, wave and sun power.
Famously, in the 1970s Jimmy Carter donned a cardigan to preach energy conservation from the White House just a few weeks into his presidency, but the message that the American public should suffer a little discomfort as a response to high oil prices went down like a lead balloon.
Despite this precedent, a few politicians are again beginning to embrace energy efficiency as a way to fight supposed manmade climate change.
At a recent summit held by IMServ to discuss the impact of the UK’s proposed Carbon Reduction Commitment emissions trading scheme, former London mayor Ken Livingstone highlighted the benefits of taking just a few simple, commonsense actions.
During his final months as mayor Livingstone launched a programme aimed at cutting carbon emissions across thousands of London’s public buildings and reducing energy costs by up to 25%. He believes the private sector should follow suit. “We can reduce energy consumption by 5% in this city within 24 hours if every private company switched off its lighting and computers overnight,” he said by way of example.
Of course it would be wonderful if people in both the public and private sectors could acquire the habits needed to achieve this, but, unfortunately, human beings can be an apathetic lot. So, it is good to know that there are businesses and entrepreneurs developing technologies and systems that remove apathy as a factor in energy saving. Examples include Active Energy, a subsidiary of AIM-quoted Cinpart, which specialises in ‘voltage optimisation’ – a straightforward approach that employs transformers to reduce the 240V current entering buildings in the UK to the more appropriate 220V.
(Since nearly all household electrical appliances in the UK are designed to work at 220V or below, the present situation means that around 10% of power entering buildings is wasted!) Of course, there are plenty of other technologies that reduce energy consumption without affecting our standard of living, and we will be covering the companies behind them in forthcoming issues of Quoted Cleantech.
Jon Mainwaring
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