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Enigin News - CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme Needs Simplifying

Enigin News - CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme Needs Simplifying

THE UK’s Committee on Climate Change has recommended that the UK government re-designs the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme before the second phase, primarily to reduce its complexity.

The mandatory CRC scheme was introduced in April this year to force UK businesses like banks, hotels, hospitals and schools to help cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tonnes and reduce corporate energy bills by £1 billion ($1.57 billion) a year by 2020.

The CRC scheme would affect around 5,000 businesses with an energy spend more than £500,000 a year, they will be required to monitor energy usage and report their emissions annually. 
From April 2011, they will also have to estimate future emissions and buy carbon permits.

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The deadline for firms to register is two days away, September 30, but it has been estimated that 35 percent of companies will be late.

As the scheme stands now, it will set a cap from 2013 onwards limiting the number of carbon allowances for which organisations can bid through an auction system. The Committee estimates that by 2017, the scheme could help participants, which currently account for 10% of the UK’s emissions, reduce these by 30% compared to 2008 levels.

UK minister for energy and climate change, Greg Barker, said:

"I have made it clear before now that I want to simplify the bureaucracy of the CRC scheme.

“Today's report will help inform our thinking on setting the cap for CRC and will feed into our work on simplification of the scheme,".

Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change, David Kennedy said:

“The CRC scheme has the potential to make an important contribution towards meeting carbon budgets. However, current proposals risk making the scheme unnecessarily complex. We are therefore proposing that Government modifies its design to make participation in the scheme easier to for companies and public sector organisations”.

If the design of the second phase was simplified, the Committee said that Government could consider lowering the threshold of the scheme to include smaller businesses.

Tuesday 28th September 2010