Opinion
“The UK has the potential to become Europe’s fastest growing district heating market”
Steve Richmond, REHAU P32
Q&A
Two minutes
with . . .
REZA SHAYBANI
BPVA
Who are you?
Richard Hiblen, managing director of Green Square home energy
centres
What do you do?
I have worked in and around the renewable energy industry
for more than 15 years so in March 2013 I opened the UK’s first
dedicated renewable energy centre, Green Square in Raynes Park.
Where are you?
Green Square’s flagship store is based in Raynes Park, Greater
London, and we’ve recently opened in Kelso, The Borders and are
set to open the doors to our Tunbridge Wells branch shortly – watch
this space! Our head office is based in Suffolk where we started
from and our training centre is based. Green Square covers all of
England, Scotland and Wales.
How’s business at the moment?
The company, which isn’t two years old yet, has seen outstanding
success and we are rapidly growing and opening stores across the
UK. We are still finding many early adopters are our main customer
type, either through a self-build project or major renovation.
Distress purchases that are more commonly part of the oil and gas
boiler market only currently account for a very small percentage of
customers moving to a renewable boiler system.
How could business be better?
High street financing packages that incentivise the consumer to
look at a renewable system as an option would help and build
confidence and trust within consumers and would generate more
purchases.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
Listen and learn.
How are you going green?
We’re not going green, we are green! Our stores are carbon neutral
so we practice what we preach when it comes to environmental
issues. We use Biomass boilers for our heating and hot water, and
where possible LED lighting.
REI: What have you got planned for 2015?
RS: We are supporting our members to achieve
their goals. We do this by strong and positive on-
going dialog with the government, organising
conferences, networking events, trade missions and
other educational platforms to connect them to the
customers.
Our overseas activities are also coming along well.
Our recent ministerial trade mission to India resulted
in $1.2 billion signed contracts for the members who
joined the energy minister and I. Similar activities are
planned in Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria. We are
organising a number of events in the coming months
which are ideal educational and networking platforms
for the members and the industry.
What do you see as the growth area for renewables?
In solar we will see cost reduction continuing in 2015
which will result in more deployment. In our view, the
residential market will be very strong in the UK. Also,
as subsidies are reduced and energy storage system
prices are coming down, more and more PV systems
will be installed with storage. This is a whole new
market with major potential for our members.
How is your company cutting its carbon footprint?
We encourage our team and all our members to pay
attention to energy efficiency which in our view
is a form of energy generation. We also encourage
everyone to cut unnecessary journeys, be more
aware of the damage to environment in using paper
for example. We have banned printing e-mails in our
organisation!
Reza Shaybani is chairman of BPVA
14 | www.renewableenergyinstaller.co.uk