Green finance opportunity for logistics firms
July 12th 2011 The Carbon Trust and Siemens are encouraging logistics businesses to invest in green equipment.
The drive is part of the organisations’ call to all UK businesses to take advantage of the green finance deal.
The organisations say finance worth up to £550 million could be made available to purchase low carbon equipment over the next three years.
This figure is based on both organisations’ previous experience. However, if financing demand is greater than this estimate, the scheme is capable of delivering higher financing volumes.
In addition, they estimate the energy-efficient finance market potential in the UK transport, warehousing and storage sector is £620m over next three years.
Siemens and The Carbon Trust have acknowledged that businesses remain cautious about investing in equipment in a slowly recovering economy.
They say the scheme aims to make such purchases affordable, and will “boost green growth and unlock business investment in the low carbon economy”.
Applicants to the scheme will be credit assessed and should have been operating for at least one year. The scheme operators say finance repayments should be offset by savings made on energy bills.
The Carbon Trust will apply its expertise in carbon saving from energy-efficient technologies to provide the assessment of the carbon, energy and cost savings of any application for finance.
Siemens Financial Services in the UK (SFS UK) provides the financial backing and manages the provision of funding.
Financing can be arranged from £1,000, and there are potentially no upper limits.
The kind of technologies that could be financed include low energy lighting, energy-efficient motors, low carbon air conditioning and biomass heating.
Myles McCarthy, general manager of Carbon Trust Implementation Services, said: “The introductory few weeks of the new scheme have shown that there is a huge desire amongst British business to invest in energy-efficient equipment.
“Up to now, a missing ingredient has been access to affordable finance to enable business to make those green investments. This new major finance facility – which matches monthly payments to real monthly energy cost savings - will improve business competitiveness, cut carbon and boost the green growth.”
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