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Helping you get started on your EV journey
Switch to electric vehicles using asset finance, with a reduced fixed rate of 7.45%1
Helping businesses transition to a low-carbon economy
By working together, we can help reduce emissions and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Switch to electric vehicles using asset finance, with a reduced fixed rate of 7.45%1
Learn how you can get started on your journey towards being a more sustainable business.
Find out how we could help your business become more sustainable.
Our specialist team will work with you to assess your current level of net zero progress, helping provide tailored next steps and resources.
Find out how your supply chains will need to change to support the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Learn about upcoming regulations that might affect your current and future business decisions.
Understand how consumers are changing their behaviour to become more sustainable and what this means for your business.
Finance your assets with Barclays and Propel – find out how this flexible finance option can power your business2.
Discover the products to suit your business, from loans for buying new equipment to flexible mortgages.
Our Sustainable Impact Capital portfolio, led by the Barclays Principal Investments team in Treasury, has a mandate to invest £500m in global ClimateTech startups by the end of 2027, helping to support our clients’ transition towards a low-carbon economy.
Sign up to Octopus Electroverse and get £10 towards charging your electric vehicle. Use their app to find charge points, check their availability through live information and charge at over 500,000+ locations across the UK and Europe. By signing up for this offer, you're agreeing to the T&Cs.
Our specialist team will work with you to assess your current level of progress towards net zero, helping provide tailored next steps and resources.
Visit our Eagle labs to see how they’re building a community of the startups and scaleups leading in climate and nature innovation.
Our Real Estate Relationship Managers now have a tool that can show you a portfolio-level view of their EPC ratings and estimated energy costs.
Find out more about the EPC dashboard and current EPC legislation and book meeting with your relationship manager.
If you need help with your finances, select ‘How we help’ to find out how we can support you.
If you’re thinking about changing from diesel or petrol to electric vehicles, we can help your business with our finance options.
Did you know?
By switching to EVs you could reduce your overall fuel and maintenance costs, and eliminate your congestion zone and ultra-low emissions costs completely. You can also get free parking for EVs in some UK cities.
You might want to think about moving to small-scale solar panels to reduce your business emissions. Take a look at our finance options to see how we can help you achieve this goal.
Did you know?
You could reduce your emissions by going off grid and running your operations with solar power, or maybe run some parts of your business with renewable energy.
If you use halogen light bulbs and you’d like to save on your energy bills by changing to LED lighting, we can help you finance this.
Did you know?
LED bulbs last five times longer than halogen bulbs and use up to 80% less power.
Have you thought about switching to e-cargo bikes to help reduce your business emissions? If so, our finance options could help you.
Did you know?
With an e-cargo bike, you pay zero congestion zone and ultra-low emissions costs. This is why they’re becoming a popular choice for businesses to transport goods quickly and efficiently across towns and cities.
If you’re thinking about electric vehicles for your business, you’ll also need to think about how to charge them. We could help your business cover these extra costs with our finance options.
Did you know?
To charge your EVs or e-cargo bikes, you’ll need a new electric charging infrastructure which means you can reduce your business emissions.
If your gas and oil boilers are on their way out and you’re thinking of upgrading to electric boilers or other energy efficient alternatives, you should take a look at our finance options.
Did you know?
Switching to electric boilers could help you reduce your business emissions and improve your EPC building ratings.
Learn how you can get started on your journey towards a more sustainable business.
Our four videos will help you learn why becoming sustainable is so important for startups.
The SME Climate Hub is offering a free online training course to help small and medium-sized enterprises learn more about how they might reduce their carbon emissions and join the transition towards net zero.
Swoop Funding is one of our trusted partners and can offer the ability to explore available grants that may be right for you, saving you hours of research time.
In 2021, over 2,500 of our business banking colleagues undertook a number of sustainability e-learning modules. Now they’re even better prepared to help support businesses reach their sustainability journeys and ambitions.
We’ve partnered with Unreasonable Group to create Unreasonable Impact. This is a series of helpful programmes that supports growth-stage entrepreneurs, who may employ thousands of people worldwide, and aims to help solve some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.
As a bank, we’re also working to achieve net zero. To do this, we’re investing in the continued decarbonisation of our operations and developing a pathway to a net zero emissions supply chain.
Addressing climate change is an urgent and complex challenge. It requires a fundamental transformation of the global economy, so that society stops increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
I'm Martin Howitt, I'm the managing director of Grantham Manufacturing Ltd.
This is a business which was started in the late Sixties by my father, so I moved into it in the late Seventies as the second generation.
Moved it from being a gasket making business to the business that it sort of evolved into today, which is specialist paper converting.
About 2014 we had a factory fire, and that destroyed all of our factory and all of our manufacturing capability.
So when the fire took place, you know, you're faced with a heck of a challenge, you either fall over and run away from it or you get stuck into it, and you take on a vast challenge of rebuilding your business swiftly.
We came up with a dream of how we wanted the factory to look going forward in order that we can future-proof ourselves, but that was going to take a big investment at that time and a business looks rather critical when everything's burnt down.
You need to have somebody that's going to have a lot of faith in your business plan, and I'm pleased to say that the relationship manager we've got with Barclays bought into my dream as to how we were going to rebuild this business.
In designing and building a new factory we wanted to make sure we built features into that to reduce its carbon impact, so we applied for and we got permission to put 272 solar panels on the brand new roof that we were building.
We're now in a situation where we are generating over a period of 12 months, 58% of our own electricity.
We also harvest our rainwater.
We've got a 10,000 litre tank in the ground.
So all the rainwater is gathered, filtered, and we can use that in our processes.
In addition, we've got a ground source heating system.
We've got boreholes in the ground, so the system is pre-heated by the temperature of the earth, which is generally ten degrees, and that is what's responsible for maintaining the temperature in the factory.
More recently, we've invested in a specially designed for us, water cooled air compressor.
I'm excited to be a part of seeing the third generation come into this business.
My two sons have joined and brought their own skills base to it in order they can take the business plan forward and into the future.
So the business now carries on trying to work at the sustainability model that we've got, be it from sources of raw materials or all the features we built into this factory and I'm very passionate that that's one of the legacies that I want to leave behind in this business for the next generation to build on.
When Grantham Manufacturing got in touch to have an in-depth discussion with one of our relationship managers, we were keen to support them. After their building was rebuilt following a fire, we helped them install 272 solar panels on their roof, and the Lincolnshire-based business now generates 58% of its yearly electricity needs through solar energy.
They’ve also installed extra features such as LED lighting to reduce electricity demand and improve working conditions, and have added ground source heating across their production floor. They’ve even added a water-cooled air compressor that harnesses the heat generated by compressing air and directs it into the ground source system. The complete system is generating savings, has a payback period of nine years and has reduced the operating time of their heat pump by 35% (which equates to saving 21p per hour of heating the factory) – supporting Grantham Manufacturing to reduce both their building and business’s carbon footprint.
My name is Mark Lee and I farm here with my wife Jenny.
We are at Park House Organic Farm.
We milk 130 Friesian Jersey cross cows who are outside on grass for 300 days a year.
And we use the milk to produce our own cheese and butter.
Having sprayed a field back in 2016 to get rid of some weeds and one of the nozzles in our sprayer blocking, the field was striped and we realized the cows are grazing the bits that hadn't been sprayed.
So that was our light bulb moment where we thought, well, what are we actually doing by spraying the fields?
And then we took the next step, which was becoming organic and thinking more about the soils and the grasses that we grow so that we had full control over what the cows were eating.
We became 100% PFLA certified, so we just feed the cows pasture because we don't use chemical fertilizer, we don't spray, we don't use any pesticides.
We're trying to farm with nature rather than battling against it constantly because it is only ever going to be one winner.
We work closely with our relationship manager at Barclays.
We really value having that personal, traditional touch.
This is a third generation farm, and my dad and my granddad both banked with Barclays and they have seen many changes on the farm and they're always there to discuss any changes, any new ideas we have.
When you make fundamental changes to the way that you farm, it comes at a cost.
So we needed to partner up with a bank that we could trust and a bank that we knew would deliver for us.
We produce cheese and butter for over 20 different outlets locally within Cumbria.
We're producing and selling milk directly to six coffee shops, and we're reducing the amount of plastic in that supply chain.
It's really important in terms of a connection for people to understand where their food’s from and it gives us a great opportunity to explain how we farm and why we farm and how that product is directly related to where they live.
Mark and Jenny Lee, owners of The Torpenhow Cheese Company, got in touch with us to discuss their two-year plan to becoming an organic farm. To make this change, they needed to focus on the health of the soil and make sure their cows got all the nutrients they needed from the grass and clovers.
We were able to support them with capital along the way, so that they could invest in converting to an organic, grass-based system. We also helped them build a cheese store on the farm, which met the high standards required of a certified organic farm, and they were ready to sell their first organic cheese at the start of the first lockdown.
Not only have they attracted new customers in the area, they also sell their produce at local markets, which has really helped increase their sales. Being aware of consumer sustainability trends has helped their company grow, and they’ve now hired three more cheesemakers.
I'm Sarah Melhuish.
I'm Marketing Manager here at the world of Beatrix Potter Attraction and the Old Laundry Theatre.
The World of Beatrix Potter is a beautiful, enchanting walk through exhibition of Beatrix Potter's 23 tales.
So you really feel like you're walking through the pages of her books with sights, sounds, and even some smells of the farmyard or Mrs Tiggywinkles washing.
Sustainability is a really key part of our ethos here at the attraction and the Old Laundry Theatre.
It's the strand that goes through everything we do here, and it's also carrying on the legacy of Beatrix Potter, who wanted to protect the Lake District and the environment.
We wanted to find a much more sustainable solution to our theatre lighting so this year we've changed all our theatre lighting to LED lights, which are much more energy efficient.
My name is Andrew and I am the in-house technician for the Old Laundry Theatre.
We swapped over to LED lighting because we were on Tungsten Halogen, which is quite an old technology and it's quite wasteful in terms of energy.
With our old setup, we were burning the equivalent of 25 electric kettles.
With this one, we are actually down to three.
So we have reduced our energy footprint by 88%.
I'm Tim Wright.
I work in the garden.
So I've been here now for 13 years, and in all that time, we've been as sustainable and environmentally friendly as we can.
Six years ago, we bought an electric van.
We charge it from photovoltaic cells that we have on the roof.
We have organic seed that we grow.
We cut it, we take it down, it can be used within the hour from being cut here to being on somebody's plate at the attraction.
Small steps, but something that we can all do.
Our relationship manager at Barclays really does get our business and so it's been a great part of our sustainability journey.
We're really happy with our sustainable solutions here.
I think it's everyone's social responsibility to do as much as we can to try and protect our planet as we go forward, so we would really encourage other businesses to try and do as much as they can too.
Lakes Story Limited T/A The World of Beatrix Potter got in touch looking for support replacing their old fluorescent, halogen, and tungsten bulbs with more energy efficient LED alternatives. Their tourist attraction needed over 150 new lights across its 250-seat theatre and interactive exhibits.
They told us that the new LED lighting solutions we helped finance reduced their lighting-based energy consumption by 90%, their electricity bills by 50% and reduced air conditioning costs by 20%, thanks to the new bulbs producing less heat. Plus, their new LED lighting has a longer lifespan – meaning lower maintenance and yearly cleaning costs.
They also installed solar panels on the roof to produce their own sustainable energy, reducing energy bills by a further 10%. Two new electric vans help transport equipment from their warehouse and fresh produce from the garden to their shop and café. 10p of each ticket sold goes to a local wildlife trust to plant new trees, helping to offset their carbon footprint even more. So far, 1,000 trees have been planted.
My name is Richard Odendaal, and I'm the Managing Director of AGS Support Facilities Limited.
AGS Support Facilities Ltd is a business that provides two bespoke solutions into supported housing.
The first one is a concierge and safeguarding service, which covers our customers' homelessness, accommodation properties overnight and on weekends when the support workers go home.
The second service we offer is more of a recruitment offering whereby we place staff on temporary contracts to cover day shifts such as support workers recovery workers, reception staff, etc.
We decided some time ago that we wanted to make a change to our fleet of vehicles within our business.
So we approached Barclays who were very helpful in helping us fund some new electric vehicles.
Several benefits we've noticed since moving across to electric vehicles are the tax incentives available for companies who switch to electric vehicles or fleets of electric vehicles.
The other thing for us was obviously lowering our carbon footprint and becoming more sustainable as a business in terms of our CO2 emissions, etc.
Having been in business for 25 years, I believe that business is all about relationships.
Reciprocal relationships is obviously the type of relationship you want, but we're very, very fortunate to have that sort of relationship with Barclays.
Our Relationship Manager at Barclays is very responsive, always available when we need them.
I believe that we all need to make little changes to try and protect our future in terms of being more sustainable, such as driving EVs, switching the way we power our home and just making little changes across the board.
Sustainability doesn't need to be an insurmountable challenge for businesses.
Our suggestion would be looking at it in bite size chunks and all the little changes that you can make, make a difference.
Richard Odendaal, owner of AGS Support Facilities, recently switched his business accounts to us – he was also looking to buy an electric company vehicle. Richard got in touch with one of our Business Development Managers to find out which assets he could finance.
Before speaking to us, Richard was driving a low mileage diesel 4x4 vehicle that was expensive to run and got hit with high Congestion Charges. He was searching for tax efficient ways (capital allowances, vehicle excise duty) to save on his business expenses, while improving his green credentials at the same time. Richard said, “If there is a good time to switch, that time is now”.
With the help of our collaboration with Propel Asset Finance, Richard was able to finance a new electric company vehicle. It has reduced his fuel costs by 60 - 80% (depending on the fluctuations of energy and fuel prices), lowered his vehicle service spending and avoided all Congestion Charges. Richard’s next step is to transition six Kent-based pool cars to electric vehicles, as they drive up to a combined 180,000 miles each year. He’s also looking to transition his management teams’ vehicles to electric ones.
Call us on 0800 515 4625 to see how we could help. Lines are open Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm (excluding bank holidays). We’ll need to see certain identification documents and financial statements when you apply.
Our specialist team will work with you to assess your current level of progress towards net zero, helping provide tailored next steps and resources.
Read our latest insights on the role that businesses can play in fighting climate change, and how environmental sustainability and commerciality can go hand in hand.
Discover how greener homes, travel and money management can play a part in living a more sustainable lifestyle.
Visit our Eagle labs to see how they’re building a community of the startups and scaleups leading in climate and nature innovation.
“We’re passionate about providing help and support to our one million clients on their journey to become more sustainable and help the UK reach its net zero target.”