Business electricity and business gas users may well be investigating how they can make their consumption of energy more environmentally-friendly.
After all, not only is the government introducing measures to encourage this but there is also evidence that consumers are voting with their feet and seeking firms that can prove they are doing their bit to help the planet.
With this in mind, some companies may have investigated using heat pumps to supplement the energy supplied to them.
However, new research suggests that not all such devices are installed properly, meaning some are performing badly.
Conducted by the Energy Saving Trust (EST), the study found that 80 per cent perform so badly that they would not qualify as renewable energy under proposed European standards, the Guardian reports.
The pumps require a certain amount of electricity in order to drive and compress gas which is then used to transfer heat from outside air or soil into a building.
In theory, such devices should generate more energy than they consume. In reality, however, this is not always the case.
The EST discovered that of 83 pumps it monitored for a year, 87 per cent did not achieve a system efficiency of 3, which is what the organisation considers to be a "well-performing system".
Meanwhile, four in five failed to meet 2.6, which is the level being considered under a European Union energy directive for classification as a renewable source of energy.
Commenting on the findings, head of business development for the EST Simon Green said: "This trial shows that when installed and operated correctly, heat pump technologies will save significant amounts of CO2 in the UK, when replacing oil or traditional electric heating.
"But there is no doubt that the results are more varied than were expected, with results showing both high and low-performing heat pumps."
The research may influence the strategies for saving energy being implanted by business electricity and business gas users around the UK.
