Carbon Trust urges UK businesses to save £1m a day

The Carbon Trust has today launched a major new campaign designed to raise awareness of the scale of the energy bill savings businesses can achieve, urging UK firms to save at least £1m a day through cost-effective energy saving measures.

The "One Million A Day" campaign has secured support from the government, the CBI, the Institute of Directors and a raft of high-profile business leaders, including Marks & Spencer's Stuart Rose and Dragons' Den entrepreneur Theo Paphitis.

It will call on businesses to prioritise energy saving measures, arguing that most businesses could save up to 20 per cent on energy bills by taking low-cost or no-cost action on energy efficiency.

It will also also seek to raise awareness among small and medium-size businesses of its £35m Carbon Trust fund, which can provide them with interest-free loans of up to £200,000 to help fund investment in new energy efficient equipment.

The campaign has set itself a target of saving the UK economy up to £1bn over the next three years through reduced energy bills, cutting carbon emissions by at least 17 million tonnes of CO2 in the process - the equivalent to annual emissions from heating nearly 5.5 million average UK homes.

Energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband said that the campaign offered further evidence that environmental and business goals were closely aligned.

"We are no longer choosing between what's good for business and what's good for the environment," he said. "By taking action now to reduce energy use and cut carbon from our goods and services, UK business has the opportunity to not only save money and create jobs, but set us on the path to becoming an innovative low carbon economy."

The Carbon Trust said that the campaign would serve to highlight the three simplest steps firms can take to deliver significant cuts in energy bills: implementing energy monitoring systems; installing more efficient lighting systems; and enhancing heating efficiency through new boilers and improved insulation.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said there was a strong case for such investment, despite the ongoing recession.

"As UK companies look for strategies to weather the recession, it makes business sense to join the Carbon Trust campaign to cut costs by cutting carbon, " he said. "We want to take £1bn off the energy bills of UK plc over the next three years by saving at least £1m a day through cutting carbon emissions... Every business should be asking how much cash their company can save by cutting carbon."

His comments were echoed by Dragons' Den entrepreneur Theo Paphitis who argued there was a strong commercial case for businesses to turn to energy saving as their first means of cutting costs.

"Businesses of all sizes need to find ways to cut costs in this economic climate - that's a fact," he said. "But there are ways to save cash without affecting the day-to-day running of the company and finding ways to reduce energy is one sure-fire way to do this."