CRC - is the league table a red herring?

For most people, the Performance League Table is a red herring.

Depending on how scheme participants manage their carbon footprints, they will be assigned a ranking on the Performance League Table. This will be publicly available, so the theory is that organisations will not wish to be named and shamed for appearing low down in the league. Secondly, there are financial penalties associated with your league table position.

Since the Environment Agency took over much of the information on CRC seems to have become both more complicated and more vague. For example, the fixed price for carbon allowances was originally announced at £12/tonne. This does not appear to be confirmed on the current CRC website. When participants get their money back through recycling payments, the original plan was that they would get a bonus or a penalty depending on their position on the league table. This could be between 5% and 50%. Again, these figures do not appear on the new CRC website.

Cyber Associates has requested clarification of these points from the CRC helpdesk, but in the meantime let’s use the original figures. On that basis a 5% bonus or penalty on your recycling payment is about 0.3% of your bill. That’s why we believe that the League Table is a red herring.

You will gain far more by reducing your energy usage than by trying to improve your league table position.

After all - as will be revealed at the 10th June conference - many participants will be prevented from taking advantage of the early Action Metrics and will have no way to improve their position at all.

This is all part of the obligation under the Climate Change Act to cut CO2 by 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. With UK emissions still growing, even standing still will be difficult. The oil price has been on the rise for most of this year, so energy is going to be expensive to buy and if you use it inefficiently the government is making it even more expensive to use!