British Gas is buying into a business which makes telecoms firms and data centres more energy efficient.

The supplier is chipping into a £7million pot of investment into 4energy along with existing investors the Environmental Technologies Fund, Carbon Trust and Catapult Venture Managers.

4energy claims it can cut the cooling needs for electronic data centre and telecoms equipment by up to 50%. Its software lets firms analyse their thermal footprints and change air-flows and temperature gradients, as in what rate and direction the temperature of buildings changes.

Phil Bentley, Managing Director of British Gas said: “Data centre and telecoms energy usage is increasing rapidly and this investment will enable us to help our customers to manage their energy more efficiently.”