Considerate Group are delighted to announce that we have been selected to continue our work as part of the UK Government’s development programme of innovative solutions for the SME energy efficiency market. In March this year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) confirmed our contract to continue with phase 2 of their ‘Boosting Access for SMEs to Energy Efficiency’ competition (BASEE).
Background
In 2018 Considerate won an innovation competition run by BEIS aiming to develop exciting, new and innovative solutions to assist hospitality, retail businesses and schools to monitor and reduce their energy usage. As hospitality specialists we are aware of the huge energy consumption of the industry – the UK sector consumes around 17,000 GWh of energy each year – enough to power 1.2 million households. Using our extensive industry knowledge, through this project we began developing ‘Fluttr’ – the app is designed to save hospitality businesses money by helping them manage the energy use of their operations. Fluttr is designed to increase awareness of energy usage and drive behavioural change to reduce consumption – and therefore lowering both costs and the organisation’s carbon footprint. Testing of the app is on-going and continuing.
The new challenge!
While behavioural change is a good start, it can only go so far. A hospitality business can only be as energy efficient as its appliances allow it to be – with older equipment typically consuming far more energy than modern counterparts. Indeed, the hospitality sector has the potential to reduce its overall energy use by 25% – which could result in up to 40% savings, according to a report by EDIE.
Additionally, a recent report commissioned by BEIS indicated that the UK market for the provision of non-domestic energy efficiency services tends to target larger companies rather than SMEs. Service providers favoured projects of £1m plus – a scale that is hard to reach for smaller scale energy efficiency.
With 99.9% of all private sector businesses in the UK being SMEs, the BASEE competition seeks to address this gap by introducing to the market business models or IT tools, which can either lower costs through economies of scale or through promoting simpler and more accessible practices to encourage SMEs to invest in energy efficiency.
Considerate’s solution
Through BASEE, we will be developing Fluttr to a different level – aiming to link SMEs in the hospitality sector wanting to invest in small scale Energy Efficiency projects, with the funding to complete these projects – together with an approved range of contractors and suppliers able to implement projects reliably and cost-effectively. Fluttr will also be able to monitor energy usage at the site both before and after the project – allowing businesses to measure the environmental impact and return on investment of their work.
Want to get involved?
Considerate are looking for potential customers and retrofit suppliers to partner with while developing our marketplace.
Customer partners
We are looking for potential customers for the app who can help us tailor the content and design to make it as helpful to you as possible.
You can commit as much or as little time as you feel comfortable with -ranging from completing a short online questionnaire, to test-driving the app and being involved in design meetings.
In return, we would be able to provide you with the knowledge, financing, and supplier network to allow you in invest in the best energy efficiency projects for your business.
Supplier Partners
We are also looking for potential suppliers with a UK based supply chain who can help guide and test the development of the marketplace and give us crucial guidance and knowledge of the energy retrofits sector. This will help us to create an app that is efficient at bringing in new customers and encouraging SME hospitality businesses to invest in energy efficacy upgrades and kitchen retrofits. As with our customer partners, you can commit as much or as little time as you are able.
In return for your guidance, we will be able to provide you with a pool of customers looking to invest in energy efficiency retrofits.
For more information or to get involved please get in touch
