Through the Enhanced Capital Allowances regime, the government has been keen to encourage businesses to take advantage of green technology for some time.

However, some changes to capital allowances regimes allows businesses to claim 100 per cent allowances on a wide range of energy efficient and other environmentally beneficial plant and machinery.

Smaller businesses will obtain 100 per cent relief in any event through the Annual Investment Allowance, which provides a full deduction for expenditure on plant and machinery up to £100,000 in each year. The allowance does not, however, apply to expenditure on cars.

For slightly larger businesses thinking about going green, here are a few suggestions of things which attract enhanced capital allowances.

Water efficient products

Businesses seeking to reduce their water usage might consider investing in the following types of technology:

• cleaning in place equipment
• efficient showers
• efficient taps
• efficient toilets
• efficient washing machines
• flow controllers
• leakage detection equipment
• meters and monitoring equipment
• rainwater harvesting equipment
• small scale slurry and sludge dewatering equipment
• vehicle wash water reclaim units
• water efficient industrial cleaning equipment
• water management equipment for mechanical seals
• water reuse

To investigate further, those interested can follow up particular products by performing a product search on the eca website. For example, under rainwater harvesting equipment, buyers can search for the products which meet the criteria of the three types of equipment needed for a system - rainwater storage vessels, rainwater filtration equipment and monitoring and control equipment.

The website then lists the manufacturers and product information together with technical details of each individual product. Contact details for manufacturers are also provided.

The product search in relation to water technologies is at http://www.eca-water.gov.uk

Energy efficient products

The list of products is much wider and is grouped into a number of technologies, which is updated every year. The changes to the list of approved technologies for 2008 were:

The introduction of four new technology categories:

• Compressed air equipment
• Flow controllers
• Master controllers
• Heat pumps for space heating
• Heat pump dehumidifiers
• Lighting
• White light emitting diodes for accent and amenity display lighting

Housekeeping changes to the current eligibility criteria in 11 areas as follows:

• Boiler equipment
• Biomass boilers and roomheaters
• Gas-fired condensing water heaters
• Localised rapid steam generators
• Steam boilers
• Compressed air equipment
• Refrigerated air dryers
• Lighting
• Controls
• High efficiency lighting units
• Motors and drives
• Variable speed drives
• Integrated motor drives
• Refrigeration equipment
• Packaged chillers
• Compressors

Those interested in installing energy efficient plant can again search the relevant technology type by going through http://www.eca.gov.uk and choosing Energy.