Business support organisation, North East BIC, has been established for more than 30 years and manages accommodation for over 300 businesses in Sunderland and Darlington. Paul McEldon, Chief Executive, describes how the organisation set about decarbonising its Sunderland site, with support from Climate Action North.  

When did North East BIC first start to take action to reduce carbon emissions?

Even though we have a building which is nearly 30 years old, which wasn’t built with carbon reduction in mind, we had a wind turbine installed as long as 28 years ago. We also installed solar panels around 12 years ago and we’ve had electric vehicles on site for many years - we used the first electric Segway in the North East to deliver our post.

So we’ve been making changes for a long time, and our carbon footprint has reduced by 60% in the last 20 years and by 37% in the last 10 years.

And what’s happened more recently, and what’s prompted your recent carbon reduction work?

Three things have prompted our most recent round of action: we want to help the environment; it makes financial sense; and increasingly, businesses are required to have a sustainability plan in place in order to bid for contracts.

Climate Action North is a tenant of ours and we’ve worked with them to create a new carbon reduction plan which we’ve published on our website.

What other changes have you made recently which have had a positive effect on your sustainability?

We’ve invested £300,000 in additional solar panels and battery storage, so we are now storing our unused solar power and using it as and when we need it. We’ve invested in LED lighting across the whole of our site – something that’s cost effective as well as reducing our carbon footprint.

We’ve worked with our tenants to reduce waste and have now achieved zero waste going to landfill. And we’ve also rewilded a lot of our grass areas and, with Climate Action North, developed a Pollinator Park. We had our first sighting of a grasshopper the other day!

Has there been a cost benefit to saving carbon?

A lot of the decisions we’ve made have been driven by economics as well as climate change. If you take a longer term view, you can see the financial return, and reducing our energy usage has allowed us to keep our tenants’ service charges at the same level for a longer time.

What’s been challenging about making changes, and what’s been more straightforward?

Understanding some of the language, which can be very confusing, has been a challenge. Climate Action North have helped us get our heads around that. [The North East Growth Hub has a guide to net zero jargon here [LINK].]

What’s been very easy is getting our staff and tenants on board. Everyone’s been up for making changes and very open to the idea of investing in our green agenda.

What advice would you give to other businesses which want to reduce their emissions?

Increasingly, we can see that sustainability is coming as a requirement for government contracts, for all businesses. So even if you’re not being asked to make changes now, within three to five years you’ll start being asked to have a carbon reduction plan in order to apply for contracts.

Plus, if you think medium to long term, you can see the financial return. When we first put solar panels in, the return on our original capital investment was six years, but with electricity prices increasing, that’s probably reduced to three or four years now.

Are there things you could do to reduce carbon emissions from your business? Take a look at the resources in our Net Zero toolkit to help you make changes.