The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme has been introduced to make obligated organisations think about the amount of energy and fuel that they use, and to encourage those organisations to put in place energy efficiency measures. It aims to reduce carbon emissions from these organisations by at least 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, by 2020.
In October 2010, the coalition Government announced a significant change to the CRC scheme as a part of their spending review. A copy of our consultation response can be found in the Knowledge Centre.
The new scheme will work as follows:
Full participants should measure and report their carbon emissions annually, following a specific set of measurement rules. The first annual report of emissions was due by the end of July 2011. If you are an obligated organisation and you missed the CRC reporting deadline please contact us
Starting in 2012, full participants will buy and surrender allowances from the Government each year to cover previous year's emissions. Organisations that decrease their emissions can lower their costs under the CRC.
The first sale of allowances to cover emissions in financial year 2011 / 12 will take place in 2012 – as such no payment is due in 2011.
The price of allowances has been set at £12 per tonne of carbon dioxide in the 2011 Budget.
A CRC performance league table will be made available to the public. This table will show how each full participant is performing against a series of defined objectives compared to other participants in the CRC scheme. If an organisation performs well, the league table will help to significantly boost the organisation’s reputation as it demonstrates emissions reduction successes. Please note that, because of the changes to the CRC that were announced in October 2010, organisations that improve their league table positions will no longer directly benefit financially.
Each year, league table positions are determined by an organisation's performance with regard to the following three metrics:
- Early action metric: 50% of an organisation's score is based on what percentage an organisation’s electricity and gas supplies is covered by voluntary automatic meter readings (AMR) in the year to 31 March 2011. The remaining 50% is based on the proportion of an organisation's CRC emissions certified under the Carbon Trust Standard or an equivalent scheme.
- Absolute metric: The percentage change in an organisation’s emissions, compared to the average of the previous five years (or number of years available until 2014/15).
- Growth Metric the percentage change in emissions per unit turnover, compared to the average of the previous five years (or number of years available until 2014/15).
The weighting applied to the above three metrics in calculating the overall score will change over time. In the first year, early action will count for 100% of an organisation’s league table score. Over the first few years of the CRC scheme, the early action metric will gradually decrease in importance until the absolute and growth metrics receive 75% and 25% weightings respectively in 2014/15 and thereafter.
We offer low cost CRC compliance solutions to help obligated organisations with their registration, data collection and annual reporting requirements under the CRC Regulations. We will help to ease the administrative burden and ensure that your data is accurate. This in turn will make sure that you pay the right amount of money and avoid fines. Please email us to find out how we can help you, or enquire about joining our CRC compliance service via our online form.