Support rises for the Government's ECA scheme

Over the last six months, the Government's Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA) scheme, which offers 100% first year capital allowances to businesses that invest in technologies meeting energy-efficient criteria, has received more than five times the number of applications from UK manufacturing firms than it did in the previous seven months. The scheme, which was launched back in 2001, has come under fire due to a lack of interest and support from UK businesses. But figures just released by the Carbon Trust, who took over the management and promotion of the scheme in August last year, show that 376 new applications have been registered since August 2002 compared to just 66 during the previous seven months. According to the Carbon Trust, 179 of the applications received in the last six months and 1,225 individual products have already been approved. For example, the number of industrial boilers on the Energy Technology List (ETL) has more than doubled from 234 in January 2002 to 511 in January 2003. Go to www.eca.gov.uk for the full ETL listing. Manufacturers with qualifying products receive permission to use the ETL symbol signifying to specifiers that their product meets energy efficient criteria and that purchasers can qualify to claim an ECA. Whilst encouraging, the figures don't really paint the full picture though. Without knowing how many UK companies are actually switching their product expenditure to energy-efficient equivalents, we can't really gauge the true success of the scheme. Dr Andy Lewry, ECA manager at Carbon Trust commented: "The positive feedback we have received direct from manufacturers is very encouraging. We are definitely seeing the results of the past year's promotion of the scheme and have received useful feedback from manufacturers, trade associations and consumers which will help us to make additional improvements where needed."