Reaching 2000 UK SMEs in just 12 months: Energy Solutions Oxfordshire
ep partnered with Low Carbon Hub and Oxford Brookes University to launch a community scheme that would help local businesses adopt energy-saving measures. The project was part-funded by a £1.1M grant from the Government’s BASEE programme which powered the development of a unique community ESCO called Energy Solutions Oxfordshire (ESOx). We worked with ESOx to lead the development of ESCO-in-a-box. This virtual box – filled with low-carbon resources, best practice guides, and practical tools – helps local authorities, organisations, and community co-ops to offer energy efficiency support to SMEs. It means local environmental initiatives can go to market quickly and efficiently to better serve local businesses. We’ve also developed a strong network of local suppliers and contractors.
The scheme is already helping SMEs to implement decarbonisation measures and green technologies, including a pipeline representing annual savings of 2.15 GWh, equivalent to 494 tCO2e, with 20 local businesses saving a totality of £116,900 every year.
Type | Frequency | Savings | Savings | Savings | Cost | Cost |
LED lights | 16 | 360,574 | £37,723 | 75.11 | £162,715 | £211,198 |
Heating | 27 | 1,324,905 | £45,955 | 304.17 | £551,575 | £697,200 |
Solar PV | 10 | 117,105 | £17,494 | 35.17 | £174,500 | £221,000 |
Insulation | 26 | 430,286 | £12,910 | 89.81 | £272,200 | £385,000 |
Other | 3 | 16,785 | £800 | 3.91 | £6,000 | £8,000 |
82 | 2,249,655 | £114,882 | 508.17 | £1,166,990 | £1,522,398 |
Bringing EIAB to US markets: NuWorld Energy and their offer to the NY Tri-state area
Rasean Miller is an entrepreneur and the owner of NuWorld Energy (founded 2021). NuWorld Energy operates out of Long Island, New York.
Problem
Having run an LED lighting company since 2016, Rasean wanted to dive deeper into the energy efficiency sector. He decided to found NuWorld Energy, a full service energy company in 2021.
Rasean planned to target the MUSH (Municipalities, Universities, Schools, Health) sector, which accounts for a big historical % of ESCO revenues in the US.
A full service energy company is a complex business, and setting up from scratch would have taken a long time and have been a very inefficient approach. After working in the energy efficiency sector for many years, Rasean was acutely aware of the importance of standardisation, reliability and credibility if he wanted to succeed.
Solution
Rasean contacted EP Connect. Because they offered a toolkit containing everything needed to build a solid ESCO business foundation, partnering with EP Connect was very appealing. The processes, software, contracts and frameworks were all there with EIAB, along with significant implementation support from the EP Connect team.
“I call it a million dollar set of documents”
EP Connect and the EIAB toolkit helped Rasean develop his marketing plan, value proposition, and many of the other foundational elements needed for a successful business.
NuWorld Energy is the first company to introduce the EIAB model to the US. As the first to market with something so innovative, Rasean, with the support of EP Connect, put a lot of work into tailoring his message to connect with the MUSH sector. MUSH organisations are used to working with big name ESCOs and initially had no idea what EIAB was. This made the tailored marketing an essential element of the pitching process. convincing them to work with NuWorld Energy instead of their usual big ESCOs.
‘The support has been nothing short of phenomenal. We’d have bi-weekly checkup meetings that were really helpful, and they’ve helped hasten our redevelopment from a 2 year process to something we were able to complete in 9-10 months’.
Results
“ESCO-in-a-box is to the ESCO industry: What McDonald’s was to the burger industry; What Netflix was to the movie industry; and What Amazon was to the retail industry”
Despite the difficulty of “trying to introduce the present to the future”, the value proposition and key messages Rasean built with the help of EP Connect resonated with the US MUSH sector. NuWorld Energy is still in the early stages of growth, but the first results were seen five months after launching NuWorld Energy. The business was accepted into a business incubator with a 10% acceptance rate, supporting further development and access to venture capital.
“It had a lot to do with the uniqueness of our ESCO-in-a-box model”.
The approved structure offered by the EP Connect EIAB reassured the MUSH sector that NuWorld Energy as a small ESCO could handle their size of energy project. It added a crucial level of comfort.
“You are operating using an operating system created in the UK by a really reputable company using the ICP protocols.”
ESCO-in-a-box EEnovators: 9-40% potential reduction in energy use for the Kenya agri-food sector
Linda Manyala is the Legal & Compliance Lead at
Eenovators, an energy consulting firm and ESCO based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Problem: Reducing energy use in a hard-to-reach sector
Eenovators carry out regular energy audits for a range of businesses in Kenya. But the energy efficiency measures that they recommended weren’t being acted on.
Eenovators didn’t want to just take their clients’ audit money and run. They wanted to help regional businesses across all sectors save money and reduce their energy and water use. With rising global energy prices and the developing threat of climate change, helping their clients to become more resilient was a crucial mission to them.
‘We wanted to understand why they weren’t implementing the recommendations to get them to a better place. Your facility’s more efficient, more productive, you’ve reduced costs, you have alternative sources of energy’.
After speaking with their clients, Eenovators realised that the main obstacles to energy efficiency solutions were time, technical skills and cost. Focused on running their core businesses, energy efficiency changes simply weren’t a priority for their clients. The agri-food sector in Kenya in particular was hard to engage, but had great potential for significant savings in energy and water use levels.
Solution: Provide technical skills and affordable finance to create change
In October 2020 Eenovators partnered with GIZ to begin a one year project with 10 Kenyan agri-food facilities. The aim was to use EP Connect’s ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ solution in tandem with their own internship program (YEEP) to boost energy savings awareness in the sector and create a personalised energy management plan for each facility.
The Eenovators team were delighted with the range of packages and templates included in EP’s ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ solution.
‘ESCO-in-a-box’ is a toolkit that provides all the systems and processes and templates to be able to deliver energy efficiency to SMEs.’
‘It has really made everything effortless in terms of both project design and monitoring and evaluation. It made reporting very easy because we had a CRM that was in-built.’
EP Connect tailored the ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ offer to suit Kenyan legal requirements and sector specific needs.
‘The team is made up of experts, they know what they're doing. They have an amazing product. They will work with you. They will show you how to use their tools and lead you to whatever strategic goal you have for your company.’
A YEEP intern was assigned to each facility by Eenovators to
carry out the audits and keep the projects alive in busy facilities focused on
their core business. Energy meters were installed to produce real-time energy
consumption readings.
Results: Increased local technical skills and engagement with a hard-to-reach sector
‘It has been an easy conversation with our clients, they were all willing to do this. The only barrier that was there before was the finance’.
When it came to acting on energy saving recommendations at the end of the project, the ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ finance package meant there was no problem of affordability and risk. The facilities were amazed that Eenovators provided the finance and the expertise without the facility having to make any initial contribution at all.
Monitoring tools in the facilities showed great opportunities to reduce water and energy use once energy efficiency projects were put in place.
– 9-40% reduction in energy use (over 60m kWh)
– 900 tons of carbon emissions
– 90m Kenyan shillings
EP Connect’s tailoring of the ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ solution to meet Kenya’s specific circumstances helped deliver multiple impacts: energy and carbon savings are complemented by water and firewood savings.
‘If an energy service company wants to move into applying energy efficiency, especially on a larger scale, it has everything in one place so it has made our life very very easy. It’s indeed a great tool.’
The project was so successful that in 2021 Eenovators began
phase 2 of the program. They’re now working with new agri-food, commercial and
industrial facilities, not only in Kenya but also in Uganda.
‘We're trying to ensure that we build capacity on a regional scale and also implement projects.’
The plan is to help set up further East African ESCOs, and put energy efficiency projects in place across the region.
Eenovators has increased the intake to their annual internship YEEP program from 2 to 10 then again to 15. The best practice, quality assurance and integrated finance from ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ gave Eenovators the tools needed to upskill young graduates entering the job market. This is building capacity in energy solution implementation skills across the East African energy industry.
Training with the ‘ESCO-in-a-box’ tools has also increased awareness of energy use, its environmental impacts and solutions to reduce this in staff at all the involved facilities. This is key to long-term change.