Crichton Carbon Centre

​

SPI was our resource efficiency programme for SMEs in Scotland which ran from May 2012 to May 2015.  In this time we  worked with 90 SMEs across 3 local authority regions in Scotland: Dumfries and Galloway, North Ayrshire and West Dunbartonshire. The SPI prcess was as follows:

• A baseline of any activity incurring carbon emissions was taken, including heating and electricity use, waste production, transport and water use. This was converted to carbon emissions using GHG Protocol methodology.

• Each site occupied by the client was assessed to identify where savings could be made

• A report was drawn up detailing the baseline foot print and recommendations for areas of improvement such as LED lighting, behaviour change and renewables.

• The baseline data was captured withing state of art cloud software CloudApps and each client trained on data capture and entry as means of monitoring.

• Each business was assisted to implement actions and given frequent Health Checks to review progress.

• Marketing support was offered to ensure new found 'green credentials' were used to optimum effect.

July 2015 saw the official end to our SME resource efficiency programme Sustainable Process Improvement (SPI). 

The aims of the programme were to improve sustainable business practices, reducing carbon emissions and costs.

The final report has been completed and is available here. The programme was very successful at reducing emissions and costs in participant businesses, as well as having wider benefits on sustainability:

​

• It reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 0.95 ktCO2e  ± 20% in a year period, almost two days' worth of European flights

• It reduced business costs by £362k ± 20% in a year duration

• It was shown to create and safeguard employment in participant businesses

• Research suggested to shift businesses towards 'Advantage Driven', the optimum business type in the Parker model of sustainable business.