Business News

In light of the current crisis, Matcon has decided to redouble its efforts to promote sustainability and protect the environment. As part of this commitment, the company has invested £150,000 in a solar panel project at its offices in Evesham. “This will help us reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and further lower our carbon footprint,” said Stephen Ball, Matcon Managing Director. The project involved installing 504 solar panels on their south-facing roof. These panels have a maximum output of almost 200 kWh, meaning they will provide a significant proportion of the energy needed to run their business and export surplus electricity to the national grid. Solar panels are only one part of the solution; they are also committed to further reducing their carbon footprint through measures such as LED lighting, a hybrid-only company car policy, waste to energy as an alternative to landfills for waste disposal and compressed air lead checks that resulted in 16 tonnes of CO2 emissions no longer being released to the atmosphere. “We are committed to doing our part to protect the environment and to creating a sustainable future. We hope that by investing in solar panels and other environmentally-friendly measures, we can inspire others to do the same,” concluded Stephen.

GL (Green Lighting) has been successfully supplying lighting and alarms to new house builders for over 20 years. More recently, GL has introduced renewable solutions to support the industry to achieve carbon zero targets for a sustainable future. A building regulation implemented to ensure new homes have a lower carbon footprint, has increased the use of solar panels and battery storage systems. GL have developed an energy storage system that harnesses power from the sun to use in the home with excess power stored in batteries. For heating homes and water, energy efficient alternatives include infrared panels and air source hot water cylinders with rapid heat up times and lower power consumption than traditional systems. GL have opened an E-home showroom on the Great Western Business Park in Worcester with all products on display. Our team can explain how the technology works as well as offer installation and training advice to developers.

The sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK from 2030, meaning that the purchase of an electric vehicle is a choice that more people will make. There are significant tax and NIC benefits for businesses considering electric vehicles for company cars. Currently, a 100% electric car incurs no road tax duty. As a company vehicle, an electric car currently incurs a 2% benefit in kind charge. The lower benefit in kind charge automatically generates a lower Class 1A NIC charge which will benefit both employees and employers. 100% first year allowances can be claimed on expenditure incurred on new fully electric vehicles, and charging points, to reduce the company’s taxable profits. For expenditure on new charging points between 1st April 2021 and 31st March 2023, businesses can benefit from the super-deduction which offers 130% first year allowances. The Government’s plug in car grant provides grants up to £2,500 towards the cost of an eligible plug-in vehicle. It’s applied at the time of purchase and is usually given as a discount off the purchase price. For further advice on the tax treatment of electric vehicles, please contact us and speak to our specialists.

From 1 April 2023, any letting of a commercial property, whether a new lease or an existing one, will require a minimum energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of E, subject only to a few exemptions. Coupled with this penalties for non-compliance, which will fall on Landlords, are also toughening and can be up to £150,000. To avoid a MEES breach Landlords need to consider now what steps they can take to ensure their commercial properties are compliant. The starting point is to review the existing EPC and its accompanying Recommendation Report which may point out a few easy and straightforward wins that may turn an F Rating to an E. This could include changes to lighting and draught proofing which, coupled with increased energy costs should prove a win win for both Landlords and Tenants who will be under pressure to pay rents. In addition to checking an existing EPC Recommendation Report, Landlords should also check their leases to ensure the lease provides the Landlord with the required rights to carry out upgrading works. Importantly the lease should also confirm who will foot the bill for these works, from a Landlords perspective it should be hoped that some, if not all, of the cost can be passed on to the Tenant, with the Tenant, as noted above, benefiting from a more energy efficient premises. Time is now critical on this and Landlords need to be aware that the direction of travel is towards increased energy efficiency requirements as the MEES tighten further with a minimum of a D Rating required by April 2025. Whilst in the short term the cost implications for any required improvements will not be welcome increasing energy efficiency will in the longer term add value to property and protect a Landlords interest. A property which is easier to heat will result in reduced energy bills, which will therefore aid its marketability and be a plus point for tenants. Thursfields team of commercial real estate solicitors will ensure you achieve your desired outcome. Delivering commercially focused, proactive advice to ensure your investment is protected. Contact Thursfields Commercial Real Estate team on 0345 20 73 72 8 or info@thursfields.co.uk.

With the hike in energy costs, many businesses are having to find new ways to reduce their energy consumption across the board and the cloud could provide an answer.

Previously, most businesses have probably not been particularly focused on the running costs associated with their on-premises hardware and software.

Your business may not even have looked into exactly how much you are spending on electricity to run your servers 24 hours a day, as well as the lighting and air-conditioning needed to keep everything at the right temperature.

However, the amount of energy required to power this equipment represents a sizeable overhead. One way of reducing your costs is by moving from an on-premises IT infrastructure to a cloud solution, which could decrease your energy consumption significantly and could save you money.

Benefits of Cloud over on On-Premise

If you have an on-premises IT infrastructure, your organisation’s electricity costs are likely to increase substantially due to the amount of energy required to run all of your hardware and software. Moving your storage to the cloud and outsourcing to a specialist cloud provider will allow you to transfer the responsibility of running your own hardware and software over to your provider.

According to Microsoft Corporation and WSP Global Inc., cloud computing is 93% more energy-efficient than on-premises data centres. Furthermore, research by Berkeley Lab and Northwestern University, funded by Google, found that businesses could save between 60% and 85% in energy costs when they change over to cloud-based services.

Due to the current energy crisis, the supply of energy may become unstable, particularly over the winter, with the possibility of blackouts in the worst case scenario. If this does happen, a cloud provider is more likely to have better resilience in terms of back-up generators and equipment, ensuring your business stays working.

How do cloud providers keep costs down?

As specialist cloud providers are dealing with numerous customers, the cost of the energy that they are using to run their servers is shared between their customers so they benefit from economies of scale.

Since their business is IT, they will be more likely to be using the latest energy efficient servers within their data centre.

Moving to the cloud reduces the amount of hardware your business requires, lowers your energy consumption and saves your business money so it is certainly worth considering making the move before the next energy price increase.

At EBC Group, we provide the full range of cloud hosting services including private cloud hosting, hybrid cloud hosting, managed cloud services and enterprise cloud services.

For more information, contact us at www.ebcgroup.co.uk, email us at hello@ ebcgroup.co.uk or call us on 0121 368 0119.