Video: Yorkshire Post Environment Awards 2014

Gregory Barker said UK companies can demonstrate that being cleaner, greener and more sustainable can be both profitable and good for business.

The Tory MP singled out four major advantages: our island geography is blessed with natural energy resources; the UK is home to some of the best universities in the world; the City is the global hub for green finance; the nation’s workforce, management and entrepreneurs are used to change and have an aptitude for risk-taking.

Mr Barker, who was keynote speaker at Monday night’s awards ceremony in Leeds, said Government is supporting the transition through policy and investment.

He added: “I look around the room here and I look around the country and I see extraordinary signs of innovation, optimism and the British entrepreneurs and businesses getting on and finding solutions every day.”

The sixth annual awards celebrated the businesses, community groups and organisations that are doing the most to promote and protect God’s Own County.

The Yorkshire Post named chief executive Dorothy Thompson CBE as Green Champion 2014 for her leadership of the ambitious biomass conversion project.

Ms Thompson told the audience: “Drax was the carbon demon. What we wanted to be was Drax the renewable champion and that’s what we have become.”

She is responsible for delivering huge and reliable supplies of electricity, while being at the forefront of the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy. It is a daunting task, but one she is meeting head on.

Ms Thompson, a former City banker, was appointed CEO in 2005 after heading the European business of InterGen NV, which operated four gas-fired plants in the UK and the Netherlands.

It was the perfect grounding for her current role, in which she is responsible for all aspects of the stewardship of a huge power-generating business.

It is a role that carries with it a great, and very challenging, environmental responsibility. While owning and operating the largest power station in the UK, the business is wholly committed to reducing its carbon footprint.

Through transforming the business into a mainly biomass-fuelled generator it aims to provide low carbon, low cost and reliable renewable power for years to come.

Last year, the business converted its first generating unit to burn sustainable biomass instead of coal and through the biomass conversion of two further units it aims to become a predominantly renewable generator by 2016.

Ms Thompson has been instrumental in this vision, and is a key figure in the transformation of the way our electricity is produced.

She has pledged to ensure Britain’s power delivered in a way which minimises the effects on our environment.

On receiving the Green Champion award, Ms Thompson said: “We are running one of the largest coal units in the world fuelled by a fuel that was not built to burn.

“We are running it well, we are running it reliably and we are running it efficiently and it is producing one of the cheapest renewable energy available in the UK.

“That really is credit to the whole team at Drax.”

​Tom ​Bell, head of social strategy at headline sponsor Northern Gas Networks, told the audience that the Leeds-based firm is investing heavily in infrastructure across the North while cutting carbon emissions and helping customers in fuel poverty.

Mr Bell showed a viral video from YouTube called First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy, which illustrates how a movement can be born in less than three minutes.

He said: “The environment now is seen as being core and crucial to everything we do. You may have been some of the first followers, the guys that were brave enough, that had the passion and conviction to stand up alongside the people who were promoting the initiatives that have resulted in some of the fabulous things we have heard of tonight.”

The awards covered business, community, countryside, innovation, manufacturing and the built environment.

Liz Green, the BBC Leeds presenter, hosted the event. Northern Gas Networks, Asda, Banks Property and GDF Suez Energy UK sponsored the awards, which were presented at The Queens hotel.

Winners in full:

Built Environment Award: Citu

Community Award, sponsored by Banks Property: Airedale Computer Recycling

Countryside Award: Carr House Farm

Innovation Award, sponsored by GDF Suez Energy UK: Co2nscience

Green product Award: Xeros

Best Environmental Business Award, sponsored by Northern Gas Networks: ReFood UK