Sustainability

Please explain, using specific examples, how you are making a genuine effort to reduce the environmental impact of your business and improve your sustainable practice?

As a Renewable Energy System installation provider, our whole Business Model revolves around energy efficiency and sustainability. As such we try to “practice what we preach” at every available opportunity. The majority of the Bright Green team have already installed Heat Pumps and Solar PV arrays and some are currently in the process of adding Battery Storage systems. The Directors of the company have purchased fully electric cars and subscribe to 100% renewable electricity tariffs for their homes and the business offices. The Bright Green office has been “paperless” from many years and our Project Management, Quotation and Accounting systems are all cloud-based. All of our quotations are prepared and issued electronically and all of the quotation and contract documentation can be sent in an “e-signable” format, meaning that our customers do not need to print anything and can simply review and sign all of the project documentation online using their PC, tablet or smartphone. Bright Green Renewables also work closely with the local community. In line with many councils around the UK, Daventry District Council has recently announced a “Climate Emergency”. Throughout the preparation of their comprehensive report regarding an action plan to help Daventry and the surrounding villages reduce their carbon footprints, the Managing Director of Bright Green was heavily consulted about Renewable Energy systems and how they could be successfully deployed to help in this respect. His contribution was specifically referred to in the final report – which now forms the basis of Daventry District Council’s Climate Emergency action plan. On the back of this some local Northamptonshire villages (Braunston and Barby) have launched their own local focus groups to explore how their residents can reduce their carbon footprints and how best to achieve this. Bright Green Renewables have been invited to join these voluntary committees to advise upon the deployment of Renewable Energy systems into the villages – which are both off the mains gas network. Indeed Braunston Village Hall (a former large Victorian school house) was recently converted to 100% renewable heating using a system design and installed by Bright Green Renewables.

How are you helping your customers become more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment?

Please provide at least one example. By default every one of our customers becomes more sustainable as a result of the Renewable Energy systems that we design and install on their behalf. All retrofit projects benefit from significant CO2 reductions whilst our new-build customers benefit from the perfect low-carbon technologies for their homes, which are especially well-suited to Heat Pumps and highly-efficient Under Floor Heating systems.

Please provide details of a project you are proud of which made use of sustainable products and/or processes – what was the problem for the customer and how did you solve it? What products did you use and why? What was the end result?

Our entry for the Regional Installer of the Year award is an excellent example of where a combination of sustainable products were specified and installed to significantly reduce a customer’s heating and hot water costs (and hence carbon footprint) and improve their living standards by not having to purchase and store LPG fuel.  We have included a statement from our customer below.  We chose Bright Green Renewables to work with us on the design and installation of the renewable systems following an extensive search for a reliable and trustworthy partner who had the credentials and reputation we needed to handle the scale of the project correctly and professionally. Bright Green provided several options for the upgrades to the Coach House and to the main Laurels dwelling, whilst also taking into account the new oak-frame extension built in 2019. We ended-up with two state-of-the-art heating and hot-water systems using air-source technology (including a high-temperature air-source system that runs both the old part of the Laurels property as well as the eco-built new oak-frame extension). These innovative heat pump systems are further supported by a 24-panel, 3-phase solar PV array solution and 5KWh PureDrive battery storage system.  The new systems have been fully operational since the end of 2019 and we have been very impressed with the heat output and capability of the systems, especially taking into account that they are heating very old traditional buildings (albeit significantly upgraded to ensure their thermal efficiency). The Solar PV and battery systems can be monitored in real-time and have been proven to assist in keeping the running costs to an absolute minimum. Working with BrightGreen has been a pleasure throughout the project and we would not hesitate to recommend them for their capability and professionalism. The installation team was superb on-site during the installation and commissioning and for a project of this scale and complexity they worked closely with us to overcome any challenges to ensure the very best solution and installation.

Please explain, using specific examples, how you are making genuine effort to reduce the environmental impact of your business and improve your sustainable practices?

All of our engineers are home based as are the directors, this means that we only have to travel to site daily as opposed to via a centralised office and that no carbon footprint is incurred for separate office premises.   Wherever possible a single vehicle is employed as opposed to multiples, and materials are delivered to site rather than to a central location and then moved again.   Waste is split up and recycled where feasible and smaller jobs are grouped geographically and scheduled to minimise travelling.  Vehicle tyre pressures are checked and adjusted frequently, payloads are checked to ensure that they are minimised where possible, ladders are removed when not needed on a project and roof bars folded to improve aerodynamics and reduce fuel consumption.

How are you helping your customers become more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment? Please provide at least one example:

Our ethos has always been to maximise the performance of a heating system in line with efficiency improvements and as a result long before it became statutory to do so we have employed the use of compensating controls to track outside temperature and adjust the flow set point accordingly. We have used such controls on gas, oil, LPG, solid fuel, biomass and heat pump installations for over 12 years.  We oversize radiators on gas systems to retain the appliances operating envelope within their condensing range, under floor heating pipework centres are set as close as possible to minimise flow temperatures, on a heat pump 1 degree change in flow temperature equates to a 2.5% change in efficiency so the lower we can drive this the better it is for efficiency.  Almost all of our installation work is based on renewable heating installations, this year we have elected to remove gas, oil, LPG and solid fuel from our portfolio to concentrate on less carbon intensive options such as ground source and air source heat pumps, PV panels for electricity generation, biomass boilers for large scale centralised distribution, TESLA storage batteries to capture and retain low tariff excess energy production from the grid which ordinarily could be lost.  We are actively involved in consultancy projects to expand the industries knowledge of new products on the market such as Phase Change Material that can be used as an ethical repository of heat energy, for later release to replace or augment buffers and hot water cylinders and ease grid dependency for the homeowner and grid demands for the network.

Please provide details of a project you are proud of which made use of sustainable products and/or processes – what was the problem for the customer and how did you solve it? What products did you use and why?

Our customer is located in a very exposed, stone built property at the head of a valley in the Pennies at circa 260m. The size, original as built envelope, limitations in terms of power supply, lack of gas grid connection and concerns over rising oil prices led us to consider what options were available to make use of the existing heating system, extensions to it and improvements to its efficiency and sustainability.  Heat pumps would not be feasible given the limited power supply (mains fuse rating), an existing oil range was in workable condition and therefore did not justify removal given the additional embedded carbon in a replacement installation scenario. The client does however have access to a large volume of coppiced wood and has the space to store, process and season logs in nearby outbuildings.  Hot water provision had always been an issue, given that it was derived from an undersized, and un-insulated vented cylinder.  Our solution was to create an hybrid solution for him, comprising a modern high efficiency, thermostatically damped wood burning stove with the existing oil fired range. We ducted the air supply for the stove direct to it to minimise the impact on air tightness and designed a control package that would disengage the oil whenever the stove was lit.  A large gravity heat leak was used, firstly to provide a safe heat path away from the stove, but also to heat one of the bedrooms, with excess capacity that is ducted to a stairwell where no space was available for a radiator.  The vented cylinder was replaced with an unvented option, to remove the heat loss associated with a header tank in a loft space, improve the thermal retention and provide a correctly sized source of hot water. The controls were designed on the basis of hot water priority to minimise the size of the required stove, so that when a demand is registered for the hot water the heating supply ceases until it has quickly recovered and the coil size was chosen to minimise the re-heat time.  If the controls had allowed for the power element of the heating and hot water to be fed simultaneously it would have been doubled in size potentially, leading to potential for tar build up, slumbering, inefficiency, greater volumes of combustion air make-up which can decrease air tightness and higher material costs/volumes in terms of the stove, heat leak radiator, pipework sizing etc.  The heating system was split into 3 zones so that only the zone in use is heated at any given time, these were further enhanced with the use of programmable room thermostats equipped with optimum start and stop technology so that the desired zone temperature is reached at the correctly set time point. So by means of fuzzy logic the heating recruits early enough to achieve set point at the prescribed time and conversely switches off to allow thermal lag from the fabric to decrease in line with the prescribe off time.  The oil range is a pressure jet fired system, so can be auto recruited as required and provides an automated back-up to the solid fuel for ease of use and enhanced functionality and to cover times when the stove isn’t lit/prepared but demands still exist.  The key components in the system were derived from Honeywell, Stratford Stoves, Joule and NRG.  The feedback from the client has been excellent, in essence the comfort of the property has been enhanced and winters are now a far more pleasurable experience than previously and we have provided heat to areas that were dilapidating due to damp and under heating. Costs wise the availability of locally sourced timber that he coppices has not increased running costs despite, an uplift in comfort. This also allows for the majority of the fuel to be derived sustainably with a very low carbon footprint in terms of delivery, which would not be the case with his alternatives, chiefly coal, LPG or greater volumes of oil.

Please explain, using specific examples, how you are making genuine effort to reduce the environmental impact of your business and improve your sustainable practices?

I started this company/installing heat pumps because I was concerned about the environment. I am continuously making changes to my personal life to offset my carbon footprint and believe the same should be for business practices too. Last year I built an office with sustainable, locally made materials. It’s powered by solar panels, lit by low energy LED spotlights and uses recycled rainwater. We’re also fortunate enough to have space for an organic vegetable patch – this summer all the food at our team meetings and lunches was mostly sourced from the garden. We have recycling and compost facilities and have just had an electric vehicle charging port fitted in preparation for our electric vehicles. When the team are charging here it means we are drawing from the solar panel array and not always from the grid. Our correspondence with clients is all electronic to reduce our use of paper but when we do use paper it’s 100% recycled as is all our stationary. The office team don’t use Google as their internet search engine, instead we use Ecosia which plants trees in needed areas of the world for internet searches. We collect and reuse our ground source heat pump brine tubs to collect oil from our retrofit installs – we are constantly finding ways to reduce our single use plastic and find a way to recycle them in other ways instead of sending them to landfill.  I’ve spoken to our suppliers about what they can do to reduce the impact of packaging on our kit and they’ve promised to look for more eco solutions. I’m not expecting changes to happen overnight, but I think these are the conversations we have a duty to start and consequently follow through to fruition. We have a long way to go to improve our sustainability practices, but I believe we’re headed in the right direction.

How are you helping your customers become more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment? Please provide at least one example:

First and foremost my company Harvest Cornwall fits air source and ground source heat pumps with wet distribution systems for clients central heating needs. This gets people off carbon intensive heating sources and provides them with the most efficient alternative. In Cornwall a lot of people are in areas with no access to the grid and still feel oil or LPG is their only option. I’m trying to educate people that a heat pump is worth it. As of last year, I started running free seminars on everything you need to know about domestic renewables. Harvest Cornwall’s been invited to village and neighbourhood groups for question and answer evenings – it’s not a sales pitch from me, I just believe the more myths we can debunk about heat pumps the better so that as a consequence more people will make the switch to renewables and do so confidently. This is the kind of active engagement within communities, particularly those that are in off-grid areas, that we need in order to reach more people and educate them on the benefits of this new-ish technology. We don’t turn customers away because they have an old house (which is often the case here in Cornwall) I do what I can to make their home suitable for a heat pump, whether it’s advising them through improvements on their property’s insulation or extra flushing and adding more kit to the bundle to accommodate their microbore pipework. I try to adopt the repair and mend strategy wherever possible, for example often in retrofit installations the client need bigger radiators. To keep their cost and project waste down, I look at where I can use existing radiators that may be sized too small for one room in another where the output of the existing rad meets the requirement – we recycle radiators.

Please provide details of a project you are proud of which made use of sustainable products and/or processes – what was the problem for the customer and how did you solve it? What products did you use and why?

Most recently, a client came to us complaining of high bills and cold temperatures after having had a Samsung air source heat pump installed by another company. We carried out our own calculations and diagnostics and determined that unfortunately, their current heat pump wasn’t accurately enough sized for their property. We ran through a number of options with the client but they decided it would be best to take it out. We convinced the client not to give up on heat pumps but instead let us replace it with a higher capacity Mitsubishi air source heat pump. This was a very successful install as the client has since been in touch to say the new heat pump has reduced their electricity bills from £9 a day to £1 a day. I always put a lot of time into my surveys and calculating as an accurate as possible heat loss report to ensure I’m providing the most efficient heating solution for each client; so this feedback was very rewarding because it proves it’s worth investing the time in my pre-install calculations. It also feels great to know this clients heating is now really efficient for their home and that we cut down their electricity use and monthly spending bills. What I am particularly proud of with this install is the repair & mend method I’ve adopted. I have now cleaned and repaired the old Samsung by replacing panel casing on the heat pump and I am finding a way to re-use and find it a new home. I’m exploring the possibility of installing it in social housing or donating it to a village hall but the nature of this is a complex timeline as I of course need to ensure the heat pump would efficiently heat the space. If I cannot use it in either of the above, I plan to install it here to heat my office. We’re in a wasteful society so it feels great to take the time and find ways to recycle kit like this.

Please explain, using specific examples, how you are making genuine effort to reduce the environmental impact of your business and improve your sustainable practices?

Working in the Highlands of Scotland, is a huge asset and bonus to an organisation like ours, however this does pose our own logistical challenges.  The sheer land mass in which we must travel forces us as an organisation to use our own transport, however we do undertake a number of steps to ensure we reduce environmental impact.  Where possible we share vans, our vans are fitted with trackers which also record the drivers experience, allowing management to monitor driving styles, we also ensure that vans within the fleet are new within 3 years to try and reduce carbon emmissions.  Other meaures introduced by the organissation are the use of facetime for meetings, the use of public transport for meetings where applicable, all employees are given mobiles and jobs are allocated through an app (reducing print outs), all contracts etc are signed electronically and emailed, all invoices are emailed rather than posted.  On sites we alway recycle all rubbish from the installation, whether that be copper, cardboard or plastics.

How are you helping your customers become more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment? Please provide at least one example:

As a renewable energy installer our bread and butter is helping customers become more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment.  On a daily basis we are discussing with customers the benefit of installing renewable energy, and ways of improving their environmental impact for more traditional technologies like Oil and Gas.  We are part of the Warmworks team of installers, installing new heating elements into households throughout Scotland who are deemed in fuel poverty.  In introducing the new measures into households, this improves the houses efficiency and thus reducing the impact on the environment.  In all our installations and retro-fits we always use the most environmentally efficient materials ie insulation, to ensure the household is retaining the heat and becoming a more efficient user of energy.

Please provide details of a project you are proud of which made use of sustainable products and/or processes – what was the problem for the customer and how did you solve it? What products did you use and why?

Within 2019 McInnes Group Ltd worked on the Cromarty Cineman Project.  This was a community funded project to build a cinema in the outskirts of inverness.  McInnes Group designed, quoted and installed a full heating and ventilation system comprising of 1no Mitsubushi Mechanical heat ventilation unit for the cinema area, 1no wall mounted MVHR unit in the projection room, 1no Mitsubishi heating and cooling unit and 1 no 10kw mitsubishi split ceiling mounted cassette units for heating and cooling of the cinema itself.  It was tricky to design especially in the cinema area to get the equipment required in with all the lights and speaker restrictions, whilst keeping noise levels to a minimum.   We oversized the system slightly to ensure all fans etc were on a low setting to reduce noise further and ensure the movies were not affected.   We chose heating and cooling air conditioning units as these could be ceiling mounted so out of the way and they are fast reacting when a number of people enter the building and lights, as screens come on the heat rises and the system can cool the area, keeping it at an even temperature.  In the winter months it can heat up quickly from cold and no risk of freezing pipes when completely switched off if not used for a while. We recommended installing a full MVHR system along with the Air con to increase efficiency much further as we recycled the heat already generated from the Air Con back into the cinema area. Whilst ensuring Co2 levels are kept to a minimum and comfort levels are increased.  MVHR extracts the stale air from the room and filters out the co2 and recovers up to 90% of the heat which would usually be lost with standard ventilation system.  The end result was a fully functioning heating and cooling unit, which is not only highly efficient, but also environmentally friendly.

Please explain, using specific examples, how you are making genuine effort to reduce the environmental impact of your business and improve your sustainable practices?

We are based in the Ribble Valley, a rural area predominantly oil fired appliances. We are continually striving to work with the newest green technologies and advise our clients on system controls not only saving them money but helping reduce their carbon footprint doing our bit for Mother Earth. As a business we help reduce our impact by running our store off a biomass boiler, sourcing sustainable locally supplied fuel, reduce our fuel usage across our fleet keeping local and economising travelling by planning jobs more efficiently and monitoring vehicle performance and driving styles, sourcing products ideally local and from companies with sustainability practices.

How are you helping your customers become more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment? Please provide at least one example:

We try to keep up to date with current thermostats and heating controls. A great example is an enquiry from a new customer wanting to have a boiler swap. Whilst quoting for the job we discussed his current fuel usage and control system. He was open to suggestions and we advised a Grant oil boiler install combined with low loss headers and separating the heating and hot water zones, controller by mixed temperature fully weather compensated circuits. We have recently carried out the 1st year service and the customer has advised his fuel bill which previously was 3500 litres per year has been reduced to 2500. Giving a return on his investment and helping save the environment.

Please provide details of a project you are proud of which made use of sustainable products and/or processes – what was the problem for the customer and how did you solve it? What products did you use and why?

A great example of a recent project – Otters Den, a fishing lake and proposed 5 holiday lets. Initially the client was interested in installing ground source collector loops in to the lake in to a district collector loop serving each individual let. After pricing and due to the cost implications of sinking the pipe work the customer decided against this bit was adamant on going green. The next stage for us was to calculate the next option which was a air source heat pump, 5 individual units serving each holiday let. We specified the Vaillant system, along with buffer vessels, heat exchanger circuits, ASHP specific cylinder and the Vaillant fully weather compensated controller. The heating system compromising of UFH downstairs and a small radiator circuit on the 1st floor. The job was accepted and we currently have 2 units up and running both of which are let out and one happy customer. We have a local grant in place and the customer is also benefiting from low running costs for the foreseeable future.