Sustainability – the future of finance

Here at Lumify Energy we are passionate about ensuring landowners’ green energy is working hard for them. The very heart of what we do is to help our clients to be both sustainable and profitable, and we get excited when we see other businesses working toward the same goal. Our Editorial Director, sat down with our Co-founder Freccia Benn, to find out why she thinks sustainable businesses are the future. 

What are your thoughts on sustainability in business?

Sustainability provides businesses with an opportunity to lead environmental outcomes. Historically, a business was seen as ‘green’ if their raison d’être was environmentally linked, but the reality is any company can have this focus. I think the definition of a green business today is one that puts sustainability at the heart of their strategic decisions. This could be changing the way they process waste, measuring their environmental impact or reassessing their supply chain to see if they can work with greener suppliers and other partners.

What does this mean for Lumify Energy?

It’s our mission to empower landowners to be financially and environmentally shrewd. At a time when the UK government has scaled back its subsidy support, making renewable energy production appear less commercially viable, we are creating a cultural shift, so that renewable investments are fair, attractive and rewarding, rather than being perceived as complicated and non-transparent.

How do you do that?

Through our royalty audits which proves that renewable energy makes good business sense and has identified significant saving for our landowner clients since we began in 2014. Such savings are maximising the benefits of renewable operations for UK landowners.

Why is this important?

This is an unregulated area. We are increasing transparency and equipping UK landowners with comprehensive knowledge about their renewable projects, and our royalty audits help our clients to gain more ownership over the renewable energy produced on their land.

For too long the perception around renewables and eco-friendly activities has been that it’s a good thing to do, but not necessarily financially beneficial and this simply isn’t the case. Both go hand in hand, and I’m sure many financial professionals would agree.

Do you think sustainability is the future of finance?

I do. Many organisations realise that current financial models and our general attitude toward the environment has to change, and organisations such as Accounting for Sustainability are doing a great job in this area, one of the ways they do this is by galvanising financial leaders to think about how they incorporate sustainable methods into the heart of their financial processing.

It’s also great to see many big businesses taking their carbon footprint seriously, plus I’m inspired by smaller companies such as Abundance Investment which is a platform that provides finance for projects with long-term sustainable outcomes, and bio-bean which recycles waste coffee grounds into advanced biofuels and biochemicals. There is a lot going on and I do believe the tide has turned. Businesses have a unique opportunity to be the driving force for environmental change while simultaneously being profitable.