The Green Growth Platform was launched at The Palace of Westminster, London
The platform is a £3 million, 5 year programme led by the University of Brighton and offers a range of free and subsidised services to help SME’s within the environmental sector across Sussex.
These services are offered to help:
Develop and bring to market new environmental and low-carbon products and services.
- Improve environmental performance and reduce running costs.
- Compete for public and large private sector contracts.
Companies from the environmental sector operating in Sussex, or those wishing to reduce their environmental impact, can sign up for free membership, giving access to the full range of services.
The project plan
The GGP will mainly work with SME’s across 4 recognised branches of the environmental sector:
Retrofit/sustainable buildings: To work closely with the Sussex Energy Saving Programme (SESP) to support community mapping, SME up-skilling, monitoring and evaluation.
- Low carbon/renewable energy: To develop an area based approach for low carbon energy infrastructure.
- Waste management: To work with local authorities and companies to address key barriers and opportunities. Also to help improve the management of commercial industrial waste and converting waste to energy.
- Water: Facilitate innovation for water efficiency.
It will achieve these developments by offering support through 4 different work packages. Those packages are business support & engagement, knowledge & innovation, skills & training and community engagement/sustainable infrastructure.
Case studies
Power Diverter: Power diverter developed a product that compliments a domestic solar PV system by detecting when excess electricity is being generated by the system and diverting it to an immersion heater, thus providing the building with hot water. The GGP helped develop the proof of concept for the device, which was crucial in bringing it to the market.
Heatcatcher: Heatcatcher provides a range of energy and carbon saving solutions for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to operators of large buildings. The GGP helped develop the capability for modelling, optimising and commissioning Organic Rankine Cycle electrical generation systems which convert waste heat into electricity in commercial steam boiler applications.