powerPerfector’s unique Voltage Power Optimisation technology gives energy, cost and carbon savings by optimising electrical power quality and by supplying voltage at a more efficient level. In November 2009, the Financial Times called it the ‘Green Holy Grail’, and powerPerfector recently celebrated saving its UK clients a combined total of over £50 million since the company’s inception, whilst preventing the release of around 320,000 tonnes of carbon.

Angus Robertson is CEO of powerPerfector.

Is the target of reducing central government carbon emissions by 10% over the next 12 months an achievable one?

It has to be, and certainly there’s lot of willingness to achieve it but there is also a great deal of concern about how we actually do so. I think the announcement has shocked the government themselves as they have now realised we have to be more aggressive than beforehand. We’re talking to approximately 240 public sector organisations about how powerPerfector can help them achieve their targets.

What will government departments need to do to achieve the reduction?

We need a cultural change within both business and the public. You can only start saving energy in any building by first making people aware of what they’re wasting. In my view the government really needs to instigate a strong cultural change programme. I think one of the mistakes is that we just tell people they should save energy. What government should be telling them is that if you don’t act responsibly with the energy you use, you are actually reducing the resources of the world, which is incredibly selfish. Unless we conserve the energy we have and use it very wisely, then we’re simply treading on the opportunities of future generations and creating problems for them.

In terms of technology, they need to find the right technologies that are going to give them a sustained reduction in carbon, without increasing the risk of disruption to their operation. Choose technologies that are ‘fit for purpose’ so that they aren’t jeopardising the business and make sure that the savings they are being offered are verifiable. Get the fundamentals right.

Will government leading by example in this area drive an emissions reduction throughout the wider public sector and the private sector?

Our experience shows that the public sector is keener to install our technology – and other energy saving technologies – than the private sector, because the government has more control over the public sector and can issue a dictate saying that this has to happen – there is direct accountability. But the private sector hasn’t had that pressure until more recently with the introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme [CRCEES]. The government was right to legislate – as it is effectively doing with the CRCEES – in order to try and give initiatives to the private sector.

The government are market leaders and we shouldn’t think for a moment that they aren’t. They spend more money than any other organisation. If you include the MoD and the NHS their expenditure on power is huge – larger than multiple single company users. So, if you put it in those terms, they have to lead by example.

What else would you like to see government do to cut carbon emissions across the nation?

In the past they’ve looked at ways of improving our fuel sources, whether it be petrol, water or gas, but nobody has ever looked at doing it with electricity, and there is an opportunity in this country to improve the quality of electrical supply.

The quality of our electricity supply is getting worse as more sustainable power is fed on to the grid, whether from wind farms, micro CHP [combined heat and power] or domestic solar panels. That power is fed into the grid at different levels and at different times of the day, and the result is a deterioration in power quality leading to inefficiencies in electrical equipment operation.

Unless you do something about it, this will have a huge impact on electrical equipment, which will be overworked and won’t last as long as it should. The powerPerfector improves power quality and additionally adjusts voltage so it is supplied at the right level thereby ensuring all the electrical equipment runs more efficiently.

If the government wanted to reduce their carbon emissions over their entire estate by a minimum of 10% - and they do – a rollout of our technology would guarantee achieving it.

There is that opportunity for them to legislate but it’s difficult for them to do it with a single technology, which I understand, but it’s unfortunately the wrong thing to do, because the opportunity exists.

How does voltage power optimisation work?

Voltage Power Optimisation (VPO) is our trademark. When I brought the powerPerfector to the UK in 2001, we identified the opportunity and essentially created the market. The Japanese had been using it very successfully for the ten years, but we quickly realised that it was actually more suited to the UK market where voltage discrepancies are greater.

All electrical equipment that is used in this country is, in principle, designed and manufactured for the European market, which has always operated at 220 volts. If you take that equipment and export it to the UK – as has been done for many years – and you put it into a market that has an average of 242 volts, that equipment is running at a higher voltage than it is meant to operate at, making it less efficient. As a result, we have to replace this equipment more frequently, because its life expectancy is shortened.

However a simple reduction in voltage (often referred to as voltage optimisation) is not enough – the principle of VPO goes further and the ‘power’ aspect is essential, because by improving power quality your electrical equipment runs far more efficiently. VPO suppresses the harmonics, protects against voltage spikes of up to 25,000 volts and assists in balancing three-phase supply, so that electric motors, for example, run more efficiently.

What have been some of your proudest moments as CEO of powerPerfector?

One was getting a confirmation that the technology was unique from the old research and development arm of the Electricity Board when I first brought it over to this country in 2001. They checked out the technology, proved it could save energy and mentioned in their report that it was unique. That was a very important moment.

Another was when the UK Land Registry asked that our technology be rolled-out through their estate, but not just for energy saving reasons – even though there were savings of 12%, they were also having problems with power supply. They lost software and hardware equipment as a result of transients coming into their record centres and offices, which have since been resolved by the powerPerfector. Being awarded that contract was fantastic.

In 2008, I signed a deal with British Energy, who took our technology to all of their customers exclusively, after a thorough review of technologies in the marketplace. That was the first time a utility company had ever started promoting an energy saving technology which would reduce their revenue stream from their clients. So that was a very big day for the company.

One of my greatest moments was when a young employee came into my office and asked to speak to me. She said: “Angus, I just wanted to tell you, I never believed I could be happy at work like I am here, and it has changed my entire life.” That was an incredible thing for somebody to say, and I’m very proud of the fact that we have inspirational young people here who understand the need to drive the green revolution.

How will the energy market as a whole change over the next ten years to adapt to the increasing use of and demand for ‘green energy’?

I think there will be some disruption in supply as a result of all the sustainable energy being fed into the grid. That can be dealt with by available technology. Energy efficiency is a baby market – everyone talks about a huge wall of money being invested in the ‘green sector’, but what a lot of people don’t realise is that there’s not much of a green sector to invest in. From now on, energy efficiency will be a focus. Over the next ten years, the energy industry will be forced, by government, to take a more responsible position with regard to delivering energy efficiency, and will give more advice to people as to how they can do this.

Energy efficiency will be a larger market than sustainability and needs real investment to drive it forward – a 50% reduction in energy consumption from available technologies massively reduces the cost of achieving carbon neutrality and halves the time line to achieving it. This message has to be driven hard by government and also big companies in the private sector as they have a huge responsibility to show the smaller companies what they need to do to make the cost base lower and be more efficient.

The weakness of sterling in the UK may assist us to build more manufacturing to feed the need for increased demand for energy efficient technologies and solutions. This is a very real opportunity for the UK to rebuild its manufacturing output and put us back on the map.

Smart-metering is fantastic but I don’t think it will have quite the impact we’d like it to unless we can raise cultural awareness. It should be socially unacceptable to waste energy. It’s a message that can, and should, be put across through the correct marketing by government.

Simplify the CRC but don’t drop the cap!

Article reproduced with permission of The ENDS Report.

By Paul Hatchwell.

The air has been thick ahead of the summer parliamentary recess with talk of a fundamental review of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme. Some are even calling for it to be scrapped altogether.

The smart money, though, is on simplification, mooted as a possibility by energy and climate secretary Chris Huhne in his July annual energy statement. That is something most businesses would welcome wholeheartedly in principle. There is much less agreement on how.

Game-changing amendments, especially coming so soon after the scheme’s offficial launch in April, would not necessarily be helpful, particularly to organisations already heavily investing in or about to invest huge effort in low-carbon practices and technology.

Indeed, uncertainty over what, if any, changes will be made is making business and investors nervous. If this causes low-carbon investment to be postponed then it could undermine progress towards future UK carbon budgets.

One target of the CRC’s critics is the cap-and-trade phase of the scheme, due to kick in from 2013. The right-of-centre Policy Exchange think-tank has called for it to be scrapped.

This demand is premature to say the least. Especially since the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change has not yet even had a chance to recommend the level of the cap, which it is due to do later this year.

Now there is nothing wrong with reviewing the CRC after it really gets going. Even the much larger EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) has just gone through a major review ahead of its third phase from 2013.

But Huhne’s evidence-based approach to the problem would be much better served by delaying the review until the end of the first trading period. In layman’s terms – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Some, including Dieter Helm, chair of the environment department’s (DEFRA) academic committee, are arguing for tax rather than trading to become the central thrust of government policies for cutting carbon

Indeed, the government is already proposing converting the climate change levy (CCL) into an upstream tax on electricity suppliers through a top-up tax on cheap EU emissions allowances under the EU ETS. But this does not mean that a tax approach would work better than cap and trade under the CRC.

Taxes are simpler, argue proponents. But this is only true if they are set in a predictable way. And the impacts of taxes are not predictable or controllable, meaning that emissions could easily undershoot or overshoot a given reduction objective.

Because of this, a tax would not be fully compatible with the UK’s carbon budgets unless it were frequently adjusted. And that would lead to more uncertainty, making it a self-defeating measure.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the CRC groups of councils and businesses are already investigating pooling their resources to simplify carbon trading, and plenty of work has gone into pilot trading projects in both the public and private sector.

So there are plenty of options for cutting burdens for organisations not used to emissions trading. Professor Helm may be right though that the CRC market, being smaller than the EU ETS, would be a less stable one. But we should wait and see.

Also, as we are committed to the much larger EU ETS, and potentially to an extended, rationalised economy-wide cap-and-trade scheme in the long term, it would seem odd to make that harder by removing the CRC cap.

One could, just as the Coalition proposes for EU allowances, put a tax on CRC allowances to act as a floor price – a kind of hybrid tax. But the so-called escape valve mechanism, a connection with the EU ETS allowing indirect buying of EU allowances in the event of CRC price spikes, already sets a floor price. And if necessary this could be adjusted more simply than administering a new tax.

As for mandatory company reporting of emissions, that would be welcome in any event. Though not, I suspect, if reflected in the CRC’s league tables as championed by Policy Exchange.

True, league tables are a strong potential driver of change through concern over corporate reputational risks. The trouble is, as now constituted, they are widely seen as likely to give a distorted view of organisational performance.

It will be very hard to relate efforts by organisations to outcome in terms of both position in the league tables and how they benefit or otherwise from the stick-and-carrot approach of selective revenue recycling. These are probably the areas where a review of the CRC should be focused.

Of course, many organisations are already reporting emissions through the EU ETS, CRC or climate change agreements. And it is true that the very act of reporting emissions tends to raise awareness of energy efficiency. This happened in the early days of the CCL too. But after initial success, commercial energy use started to rebound, as outside the heavy industrial sector it only accounted for a small portion of total costs.

Without a mandatory cap to aim for, awareness is simply not enough – which was why the CRC was devised in the first place.