Renewable Energy Specialists, UK Alternative Energy, intergrated Zellar into their daily operations, utlising its comprehensive features to monitor and track energy consumption, waste generation and their carbon footprint meticulously. North Kesteven District Council is offering fully subsidised access to Zellar for one year for SMEs in North Kesteven.

I set up UK Alternative Energy as a renewable energy company in 2009 and was proudly one of the first businesses in Lincolnshire to be MCS accredited. I’ve always been a strong advocate for sustainability and when previously working in construction, I could see areas in the field that required change.

As renewable energy specialists, we have successfully installed over 2,130 projects across the county and further afield. We pride ourselves, not only in completing high quality installations, but also by helping organisations and individuals on their transition towards sustainability. We offer advice and support throughout the process, and we hope our new showroom will offer customers the opportunity to have a better understanding of the products we offer, prior to installation.

With sustainability at the core of the business, we’re now aiming to take the next step by working towards being carbon neutral and the aim is to have achieved this by early 2025. We’ve been actively looking for a company to assist us with this and received several quotes, some of which were as high as £6,000. When we heard about the Council’s subsidised access to Zellar, we were excited for the opportunity that this would present. Since joining Zellar, the platform has been easy to use and has navigated us towards building a Zellar score of 715 which is one of the highest scores in the county, which in upcoming months we aim to build on further. We believe Zellar is a great tool for any business to help them on their journey to sustainability.

We’ve previously won several business awards and are in the process of applying for more awards for 2024. As part of this process, we plan to send our sustainability report, retrieved from our Zellar account, as evidence for our application. This will provide judges and other stakeholders we work with, a clear breakdown of actions we’ve taken and our reduced carbon emissions.

We feel it’s important to demonstrate the benefits of sustainability, and as strong believers in sustainability equipment and measures, we ourselves use sustainable methods throughout all our work and within our office. We’ve only recently moved into our new premises in North Hykeham and are still finishing up on a few last details, but we have already installed an 11 kw solar panel system, a Tesla power wall battery, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR). We also have a Panasonic heat pump system, designed at 40 degrees to use less energy for our heating, improving the efficiency of keeping the building warm. In addition to these, we also have:

• A Panasonic air con system.
• LED lighting
• Two electric company cars with charging points.
• An Eddi Smart hotwater Controller.
• All cardboard and polystyrene waste from installations is recycled, and scrap metal is sent to a local scrap yard to be recycled.

As a business, I believe it’s important to provide support to the local community. We’ve previously donated energy efficient classroom lighting for South Hykeham Primary School, and provided a Rainwater Harvesting System, to help them water their allotments. It’s important to demonstrate the importance of sustainability to people of all ages, and we are pleased to take up any opportunity to provide examples of efficient measures to reduce energy.

Derrick Denton, UK Alternative Energy
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