Ten-year milestone for Inteb duo as they celebrate action for climate change

AFTER a decade of seeing energy issues increasingly become the focus of major global importance, two members of the Inteb team are celebrating their contribution to the fight against climate change.

Inteb Director Tom Kelly and Senior Account Executive Terry Daly both joined the business 10 years ago, a time when power portfolios were only just beginning to move away from coal towards low carbon generation.

Now energy market transformations have been propelled into one of the most critical issues facing UK businesses as they face making cost-cutting decisions which will reduce their utility bills and, most importantly, have a massive effect on the road to achieving net zero carbon.

Tom explained:

“We are now at the point where we can see the impacts of climate change, know what the solutions need to be and have the buy-in to make things happen. This will be a really challenging and exciting period not only for our work here at Inteb but also across society generally.”

Tom joined Inteb as a Senior Projects Manager, a role which involved him in various projects related to the business’ client buildings. His first job, he recalls, was to look at installing fire protection measures in an old bank building in Oxford city centre – and not related to sustainability at all.

However, he also led a project getting a number of the client buildings certified to the Carbon Trust Standard, an early sign of Responsible Property Investment and an appreciation of the importance of low carbon and environmental matters in how buildings are managed.

He said: “This has helped to pave the way for a lot of our clients – now much more environmentally aware – as to how they approach RPI, ESG and CSR matters today.”

Terry became a member of the Inteb team after working outside the energy sector.

A keen environmentalist, he was attracted to the business as a means of allowing him to make a difference to sustainability issues.

He said: “I was concerned about my local environment and saw this as an opportunity to also help beyond my local area.”

Central to all issues of energy management over the past 10 years – and ones that still are – are the ongoing changes in energy prices, the drivers of these fluctuations and their effect on the economy.

Tom recalls:

“In June 2008 – and therefore prior to Inteb – I stood in front of a room of business leaders talking about resource efficiency and presented a graph with the oil price which had just hit around $130 a barrel. I confidently predicted that the oil price, and associated energy prices, were only moving in one direction and the benefits of energy efficiency using forecast future prices were clear. What has happened in the intervening years could not have been forecast. Due to the following global economic recession, we haven’t seen oil prices – and UK wholesale energy costs – reach the same highs as we did that summer.”

When Terry joined Inteb in September 2010, UK wholesale energy costs were around 1.6p/kWh for gas and 4.5p/kWh for electricity. They were not too different at 1.7p/kWh for gas and 4.8p/kWh for electricity when Tom joined in February 2011.

Tom added: “Prices have fluctuated hugely since then, with factors such as the economic recession and subsequent recovery, conflict in the Middle East, the EU referendum result and various cold winters all having an effect – and that was before the impact of Covid-19 last year.

Surprisingly, looking back at the UK wholesale energy costs from a position of hindsight in early 2021, things have not changed that much since late 2010/early 2011. However, the impact of non-commodity costs has had the effect of driving up costs to the consumer and bill payer.

Non-commodity costs accounted for less than 25 per cent of energy bills in 2010. But this has risen to more than 50 per cent since, which has led to higher bills for the end user.

Just like it was in 2010/11, the best way to take control over energy bills is to be more efficient in the way that energy is consumed – and that has never been more true than in 2021.”

Ten years at Inteb has made Tom realise there’s no room for complacency in the energy industry nor is there any “daily grind” to his role – there’s always another exciting challenge on its way.

Looking back, he said: “The wide variety of work and the fact that no day is ever the same as any other has been a big benefit of the job but it’s also meant that the past 10 years have gone by very quickly.

“There’s also huge pride in great results for our clients – from CRC and ESOS compliance to ISO 14001 and low carbon certification – so it’s always nice to see projects through to completion and deliver the benefits their businesses set out to achieve.”

For Terry, it’s the variety in nature of the queries he’s dealing with daily that gives him the greatest pleasure in his job.

He said:

It’s not only that but also the constant working at a fast pace for the quick turnaround that’s usually needed to solve any issues for clients.

Tom believes that energy management – and efficiency – remain at the core of net zero carbon and other Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) drives which will intensify over the next five to 10 years.

He said: “The action we take now will dictate what the world looks like 50-100 years from now so we need to make the right choices and do so quickly.

“If we focus on the things we can control and continue to implement energy efficiency and energy management measures with the wide range of data available to us, we can have a great impact on the carbon emissions of tomorrow.

This will continue to be our focus for the years to come.

“Just like it was in 2010/11, the best way to take control over energy bills is to be more efficient in the way that energy is consumed – and that has never been more true than in 2021.”

And Terry agrees, adding: “Both landlords and tenants need to have a better understanding of their energy consumption as this is the only way to reduce costs and help the environment.”

Congratulating them on their 10th anniversary, Managing Director Colin Jones said:

“It’s hard to believe it’s more than a decade since Tom and Terry joined us at Inteb. Throughout the whole time, they have both been an essential part of our organisation’s journey and success. They have set exemplary standards for all of us with their work ethic, dedication and attention to detail. I am immensely proud to have both of them on my team and hope our association continues for many more years to come.”