Ultra Green plans to create world’s largest green engineering conglomerate

With a growing base of engineers specializing in low-carbon technologies Ultra Green announces an ambitious expansion plan to market new energy technologies.

By David Greenfield January 27, 2010

Brighton, U.K.-based Ultra Green has spent much ofthe last decade recruiting scientists and engineers working on a wide varietyof low-carbon innovations and, according to executive chairman Antony Blakey,the company is now poised to significantly ramp up its operations as it looksto take a range of low-carbon construction, biofuel, and alternative energytechnologies to market.

"We currently have around 100 people working across five divisions, but weare now negotiating $2 billion worth of contracts and, as projects get underway,we will end up employing over 1,000 people by the end of the year," Blakeysaid.
 
The company holds patents across a wide range of different clean technologies,including biomass and waste-to-energy systems, energy-efficient constructionmaterials, and biofuel development, as well as systems for enhancing theefficiency of oil extraction from existing wells.
 
One area Blakey is particularly optimistic about is the company’s plans for newlow-carbon building developments that use advanced insulated concrete forms(ICF) construction materials to enhance the building’s energyefficiency. "ICF foam insulation has been used inbuilding’s walls for years, but our plan is to begin using it in a building’sfoundations and roof to create a completely sealed structure at much lower costthan existing approaches," he said.

He added that the approach would reduce the energy demand from a building tosuch a level that a community could effectively be powered by simply feedingthe waste it generates into a small-scale waste-to-energy system also providedby Ultra Green.

Although the company has yet to embark on such a full-scale constructionproject, Blakey says the company is in talks with the government of Northern Ireland, as well as authorities in the U.S. and Brazil, about building a pilotdevelopment and is aiming to get work underway on its first construction projectwithin the next 12 to 15 months. The company is also said to be in negotiationswith the Glasgow, Scotland, council about deploying awaste-to-energy system that promises to avoid the need to send any waste toa landfill.

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– Edited by David Greenfield , editorial director
Control Engineering Sustainable Engineering News Desk