Imperial postgraduates show how energy companies can fight climate change

MSc Sustainable Energy Futures team wins a national award at Wembley Stadium <em>-News</em>

Tuesday 7 April 2009
By Colin Smith

Postgraduates from Imperial College London have won first prize in a national competition for their proposal that could help a major energy company and its customers to combat climate change.

Imperial students on the MSc course in Sustainable Energy Futures won the npower Energy Challenge competition at Wembley Stadium last month. They beat seven other teams from universities such as Oxford and Cambridge to take home £10,000 in prize money.

The team, consisting of Alan Whitaker, Andy Hadland, Gaurav Monga and Philipp Gruenewald, won the competition for their proposal that showed how the energy company could get their customers to enter into new energy efficiency agreements and make a profit in the process. Philipp Gruenwald says:

“At the moment, if people save energy at home, power companies lose money because they are selling less energy to their customers. We came up with an idea that could help npower to make money and save the planet at the same time.”

Alan Whitaker (Back)Philipp Gruenewald, Andy Hadland, Gaurav Monga

The team's idea would see customers signing new long-term contracts with npower, who would, in return, agree to install products such as loft and wall insulation, along with new heating systems to make homes more energy efficient.

Customers would be encouraged to make further energy savings through a points based customer loyalty incentive scheme. This would see further energy reductions rewarded with ‘carbon points’ that could be used to buy more energy efficient items such as fridges, dishwashers, dryers and washing machines from npower. Alan Whitaker explains:

“Everybody wins from this plan. Npower wins because it keeps its customers on longer term contracts, thereby guaranteeing their income. The company also wins because it can reduce costs by producing less energy. Customers would benefit by paying smaller bills and would see their property values rise, as a result of new insulation and other energy efficient measures.”

Npower has over 6 million customers and the team says it could save a million tonnes of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere each year if this scheme was implemented into just 270,000 homes. It would also enable the company to make an additional profit of £21 million a year. In comparison, using wind power to do the same thing would cost npower roughly £27 million annually.

For the competition, the team tried a new approach to delivering their proposal by acting out different roles. Alan Whitaker played the pragmatic npower accountant who questioned how the proposal was going to make the company money. Andy Hadland played the npower marketing executive whose role was to sell the scheme to a sceptical audience and Gaurav Monga played the customer who questioned how he was going to benefit from joining such a scheme. Philipp Grunewald was the green voice in the team whose job was to tell the audience how sustainable technology could be a way for energy companies to increase their profits.

Team member Gaurav Monga says that the judging panel expected them to be strong on the technology aspect of their proposal but they did not expect strong communication skills. He adds:

“They said they were pleasantly surprised and told us that our proposal was as good as anything that could be done in their own marketing department. We were really flattered by that.”

Professor Sandro Macchietto, Director of the MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures, an interdepartmental course, who was also the team’s mentor and supporter, praised their efforts. He concludes:

“Finding innovative solutions to saving the planet from the effects of climate change while not reducing our living standards is the challenge that we face in the 21st Century. I am really proud of the team who have demonstrated quite effectively one way that energy companies and their clients can meet this challenge head on.”

As part of the win, the team will travel to the Houses of Parliament to meet Education Minister Ed Balls, as well as representatives from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, where they will discuss their winning entry.