100% Renewable Energy For Our Offices

Social responsibility and eco-consciousness are central to the values we hold at Shellwin, and one of our core goals is to reach a net-zero carbon impact in the future. We recently took a step closer to that goal by procuring renewable energy contracts for our two biggest office properties – Eghams Court and Burnham House. Read on to learn more about our switch to green energy to power our office portfolio.

Why using renewable energy in offices is so important

Firstly, you might be wondering why we’re so concerned about where the energy that powers our offices comes from. Although the standard UK power grid is increasingly delivering renewable power, with 2020 touted as the greenest year for UK power ever – renewable sources still only account for less than half of the total power generated.

Estimates put the amount of CO2 produced per kWh of energy from the UK power grid at around 230g. So, despite the massive steps forward that have been made in power grid contribution from renewable energy sources, the average small business using ~22,500 kWh per year will still be responsible for the output of roughly 5200kg of carbon dioxide.

That’s a massive improvement on the situation even 10 years ago, but we wanted to strive for better.

What clean office energy looks like

Our first step was to figure out what metrics matter when thinking about clean energy. That took us to the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), which is a great resource for anyone seeking more information about sustainability in the built environment. 

They lay out three principles that can be used to assess the actual environmental friendliness of energy contracts: Energy Attribute, Renewable Sourced and Additionality. 

Energy Attribute refers to the exclusive ownership of the energy produced, ensuring it’s not being double-counted. Renewable Sourced refers, of course, to the actual source of the energy, favouring non-fossil fuel sources such as wind, solar, and hydro power. Additionality is the concept of not just using renewable sources, but furthering renewable energy production through on-site generation or choosing an energy contract that itself contributes to the construction of new renewable energy facilities.

100% green energy powering Shellwin offices

Our search for a provider that could help us meet the principles of sustainability set out by UKGBC led us to Good Energy and SSE. Good Energy only supply 100% renewable energy direct from 1,600 independent green generators across Britain. With SSE, they will match your energy usage with 100% renewable energy production from wind and hydro power sources.

Both the respective tariffs meet 2/3rds of the principles of renewable energy set out by UKGBC –Energy Attribute and Renewable Sourced (for Good Energy this is via direct renewable energy generation and for SSE this is via their purchase of REGOs (Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin certificates) for each unit of energy we use). However, we still fall short on the Additionality metric, with no additional contribution of renewable energy from on-site production. That’s something that we hope to address in the future.

How to switch to green office energy

If you’re a business owner looking to minimise your environmental impact like us, one of the best steps you can take is to switch to 100% renewable energy use. Choosing to lease an office from an operator that offers this, such as ourselves, is one way of doing this.



But if you already have an office and you want to make the switch yourself, our advice would be to make use of all of the resources on offer from UKGBC and educate yourself before you make any moves. Once you’ve absorbed the information on offer there, start to seek out an energy provider that can help you meet your eco-goals.

If you’re interested in hearing more about how we achieved 100% renewable energy usage for our two biggest commercial sites, or want to hear about our bigger push for a net-zero carbon future, get in touch with us!