Disaggregation could save you money, if you move fast!

Carbon Reduction Commitment

The key issue here is that if part of a group of companies uses enough electricity to make it liable to participate in CRC, the whole group must register and report. Every part of the group must measure and report its carbon foot print and purchase carbon allowances under the scheme. Disaggregation is a concession which means that groups can apply to exclude those parts of the organisation which would not be liable under CRC on their own, but only on certain conditions:

• You must register the whole group by 30th June 2010 if you want to take advantage of this. This gives you the time to re-register the parent company before the 30th September deadline.

• You cannot split up the group so that no element is big enough to be liable. The parent company must register with enough subsidiaries to bring usage up to participant level.

If you don’t disaggregate you must report on the whole group and buy allowances for the whole group for the three years of the first phase before you will get a chance to apply for disaggregation again.

So, to save both time and money you must make a decision on disaggregation as soon as you possibly can. Call us now on 01904 654986

The Low Carbon Innovations Network has invited Anthony Day to present a series of webinars on the Carbon Reduction Commitment. He will also be presenting a conference session - How to Win at the CRC Game - at the Best Practice Exchange at London Olympia in June 2010. More...

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!