Sustainable Hotel Financial Assistance

The Carbon Trust offer help with energy saving in two ways. The first is through the Enhanced Capital Allowances Scheme where a business can claim 100% capital allowances on the purchase of energy saving equipment and technology including boilers, refrigeration, lighting and heat exchangers. If you invested £10,000 the ECA would reduce your tax bill by £3,000. See http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/energy/takingaction/eca.htm for details.

The Carbon Trust also offer interest-free energy efficiency loans from £5,000 to £100,000 as a cost effective way to upgrade or invest in energy efficient equipment.

Save Energy’s website www.saveenergy.co.uk includes a facility to input your postcode and search for energy efficiency grants and offers available in your area. They also run an energy efficiency help-line (Tel: 0845 727 7200). The Lancashire Energy Efficiency Advice Centre is another potential source of assistance (www.leeac.org.uk Tel: 0800 512 012).

The Energy Saving Trust’s website (www.est.org.uk) provides a range of energy saving tips that could be used to reduce energy costs.

Sign up to the Business Catering International Management Association’s Government-backed Hospitable Climates energy efficiency programme (www.hospitableclimates.org.uk 0208 661 4900). The programme provides free advice and claims to be able to help business to reduce energy consumption by up to 40%. The programme also provides an on-line energy analysis tool for comparing your premises with hospitality industry norms for energy use.

The DTI’s Low Carbon Buildings Program provides advice on microgeneration technologies such as solar heating and wind turbines.

The DTI offers funding to help with the cost of implementing microgeneration technologies under Phase 1 to commercial buildings. Under Stream 2 of their grant funding (Stream 1 is for households) there are two separate categories:

Stream 2A - to be allocated over seven funding rounds (and one reserve round) Maximum grant of £100k or 40-50% of total costs (excl. VAT). There will be quarterly deadlines for stream 2A applications.

Stream 2B - to be allocated over three funding rounds (and one reserve round) Maximum grant of £1m or 40-50% of total costs (excl. VAT). Deadlines for applications will be twice a year.

For more information see http://www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/how/stream2/