The Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC), which came into force this April, continues to confuse UK businesses despite the deadline for registration having ended, says the Sustainable Business Roundtable. Participants, at the latest roundtable which included business leaders from the likes of BAA, Transport for London, Asda and Cemex, was that the league table is unfair to those companies that have already carried out a lot of energy efficiency work and are likely to come lower down the league table than those that are just about to embark on the energy reduction programmes.
Concerns were also expressed about the complexity of the regulation which has drained resources and made it difficult to communicate the impact of the scheme in boardrooms. Perversely some participants expressed a fear that the CRC hasn’t focused minds of cutting energy, more on complying with a new piece of regulation, effectively undermining the principal aim of the new legislation designed to improve energy efficiency and cut emissions.
The detail of how the CRC will work has still not been finalised, particularly for the later phases of the scheme, and the Government has not made it clear what changes, if any, will be made. The round table, moderated by Andrew Warren from the Association for the Conservation of Energy, came in the wake of the Committee on Climate Change’s independent report that offered the Government a series of recommendations on how it could change the post-2012, phase of the scheme – recommendations that were largely welcomed by the companies around the table, particularly the idea of having separate league tables for the private and public sectors.
