Biomass system modelling & troubleshooting

Often small companies do not feel they have the power to change larger organisations in the supply chain that they perceive are not significantly dependent on them. However, all parts of the supply chain will ultimately have to become Net Zero to meet legislative requirements and also for their businesses to be sustained into the future, given environmental pressures and increased scarcity of resources. Change can be brought about to a large extent through effective communication of the issues. It may be that the larger organisations are more receptive to taking steps towards Net Zero than might be apparent from the outside. By sharing ideas and objectives, there is the potential for increased cooperation and overall success for all. This communication might include conveying market advantage of operating in a way that takes environmental impact into account.

Ultimately Net Zero makes business sense. If you don’t direct resource into addressing it, you will likely lose far more in the future than the expenditure now, as you will not be operating sustainably. A hundred years ago, there were not the health and safety measures that are in place now. However, if you did not attend to health and safety nowadays, you would be out of business. The situation is not currently as extreme with Net Zero or other environmental measures, but this is the direction of travel, within the context of global climate impacts currently being at the worst end of the band of predictions. Of course you have to ensure business survival and particularly for small companies, it can be difficult to justify directing resource in the short term that could be directed towards survival in the short term. However, this underlines the importance of planning and projecting into the future. In order to work out what you need to do for Net Zero today, you need to have a vision of what you want the business to look like in the future and work backwards, building an understanding of measures that will be required to realise the vision, as with any business planning. Commercial considerations need to be taken into account with every step of the journey taken towards the vision and the aim should be to optimise the pathway to Net Zero for greatest business benefit, which should include cost savings along the way.

Priority should always be given to reducing energy demand before determining the appropriate form and scale of renewable energy supply, in accordance with the Energy Hierarchy. However, there may come a point whereby there are diminishing returns from the implementation of demand reduction measures and renewable energy is a more economically attractive proposition.

For example, once a certain level of insulation is reached for a retrofitted building, then it may be uneconomic to carry on increasing the level of insulation and reducing the size of a biomass boiler or heat pump to supply the heat. However, it is not only the current costs that should be taken into account when deciding on the balance - the greater the level of energy demand reduction that can be implemented, the less the exposure will be to the future volatility of the energy supply market, renewable or otherwise.