£12mln for energy intensive industries to cut emissions and costs

UK government has announced funding to help businesses clean up industrial processes and improve energy efficiency.

The funding for 22 projects will go to industries including pharmaceuticals, steel, paper, and food and drink. This £12.4mln is awarded as part of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF).

The new winning bids include:

• Harsco Environmental’s SteelPhalt plant, based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, develops and manufactures high performance tarmac products. This energy intensive process of drying, heating, crushing, grinding, conveying currently utilises large volumes of natural gas, gas oil and electricity from the grid, the funding allows the company to investigatw ways to capture the waste heat in the exhaust gases and transform it into electrical power, reducing the fuel demand of the road burners.
• Autotech Engineering / Gestamp is a multinational based in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, specialising in the design, development and manufacture of metals for lighter and safer vehicles. Whereby high-tonnage presses of flat metal sheets typically drop lots of energy through heat and noise, IETF has helped to fund the SERPENT project which is actively capturing and reusing this lost energy. With a reduction of almost 10% already seen in peak power usage during tool changeover, this funding is helping to lower energy consumption and the environmental impact of critical car manufacturing.

Today’s £12.4mln represents a combination of winning projects from the final Phase 1 competition window and first Phase 2 competition window.