Here at York Handmade
Brick, we are very proud of our sustainability record as we strive to do our
best to hit the Government’s target to reach net zero by 2050. This will
require a concerted effort and I am tempted to quote John F Kennedy’s famous and
apposite comment: “We are doing this not because it is easy, but because it is
hard.”
In
this context, we have just signed up to the Ceramics UK Towards Net Zero initiative. The UK manufacturing industry is making a really big effort to achieve
net zero by 2050 and I believe us smaller members have a big part to play, as
we have advantages over our larger peers. Our work into effectively recovering
heat from intermittent kilns for intermittent dryers will be shared across the
industry, with other research being shared via Ceramics UK.
All
of this is yet another reason for our customers to buy UK manufactured brick,
leaving aside for now the appalling conditions in which brick is manufactured
in South-East Asia. I really believe that we are ahead of the curve on this
with our ambition in comparison to the rest of the world.
Let
me tell you a little more about the Ceramics UK campaign Towards Net Zero. This
campaign is a key support programme to help its members to work together in
delivering further ceramic sector decarbonisation action in a progressive but
realistic manner. In the first few months since launching the initiative, an
ever-growing number of members, including many SMEs, have signed up and are
willing to work together, share ideas and approaches, and show the sector’s
collective commitment to the decarbonisation challenge.
The
scheme is free for members, voluntary, and has a simple sign-up process where
participants self-declare against a set of light-touch principles. The initial tools
and activities being provided include a Business-to-Business Sector Partnering and
Mentorship scheme, which involves sharing ideas and approaches in a
non-competitive and collaborative manner, and an Employee Engagement and
Awareness training material, which aims to raise employee awareness and
engagement in energy reduction and decarbonisation.
There
is no doubt that the energy and emissions policy landscape, and how this is
implemented, is critical to the UK ceramic sector and all member companies.
This new campaign by Ceramics UK will help members understand complex issues
and upcoming changes, supporting the industry’s continued collaboration and
response to growing challenges driven through the UK’s net zero.
Here
at York Handmade, we are very proud to be putting these objectives into
practice, having recently been awarded a grant to improve our energy efficiency
and to reduce our carbon emissions. We successfully applied to the
“game-changing” Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) for £38,800 to
pursue our sustainability agenda. We are completely committed to improving the
energy efficiency of our factory site at Alne and are currently undertaking a
detailed techno-economic feasibility study. This extremely welcome grant
minimises the cost and risks of the study and of any subsequent capital
investment.
The
special project aims to improve the energy efficiency of the site by capturing
the high-grade (high temperature) waste heat from the kilns and utilising it in
the dryers. This will offset/replace the need for gas-firing in the dryers and
lead to significant energy, carbon and cost reductions. The kilns operate at
high temperatures (up to about 1100 degrees C) and the exhaust gases from the
kilns carry substantial amounts of heat which is currently being wasted. The
solution involves installing a heat exchanger in the exhaust stack of each kiln
to capture this heat into high pressure hot water or thermal oil.
This
hot water/oil will then be stored in a thermal battery. The thermal battery can
then provide heat to the brick dryers using a radiator system on demand and
allow the operations of the kilns and dryers independent of each other.
Sustainability
is extremely important for energy intensive businesses like York Handmade as we
are seeing an eight-fold increase in our energy costs. The government has
already announced withdrawing financial support for industry with energy bills
and many similar businesses are facing existential threats due to high energy
costs, inflation and reduced spending power of their customers.
The
government’s commitment to net zero by 2050 will require industry emissions to
reduce by nearly 90 per cent from the present value. We are both happy and
proud to play our part.