Cut the tape

London - Our recent news and features coverage reflects how today’s seen-to-be-green politicians (of all colours) are continuing to ignore industry when devising environmental, health and safety regulations — at the expense of missing the targets they presumably want to see delivered.

Government policies to reduce carbon emissions will make the UK uncompetitive and add more cost than benefits, according to a recent npower survey of senior managers and energy buyers at SMEs and large industrial and commercial firms.

The survey found unease about existing CO2 reduction regulations with most respondents believing the costs of implementing the Climate Change Levy, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the new Carbon Reduction Commitment would not deliver the emission reductions being targeted.

Industry doubts about the current drift of environmental regulation will have been further reinforced by the uncertainty surrounding green electricity tariffs and whether they are achieving any carbon savings.

The problem, said the Carbon Trust, is linked to the limited information about the real benefits and nature of renewable tariffs that is currently available to the end purchaser. Meanwhile, it adds, the current market structure leads to the possibility of renewable electricity being allocated to more than one end user.

According to the Carbon Trust, it does not consider renewable tariffs as “zero carbon” for the purposes of “carbon footprinting” of products, services, companies or their supply chains. It, therefore, advises, the standard electricity emissions factor should be used when calculating emissions from renewable tariffs.

Meanwhile, even companies that had expected to benefit from the low-carbon economy have been badly let down by government policy. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation for example, has led industry to pump a huge amount of investment into new biodiesel capacity, only to see the market undermined by US imports.

And, just when UK industry though it had enough red tape around its hands, lawyers are now warning that companies could fall foul of EU competition law when joining the consortia needed to jointly register substances under the REACH chemicals safety legislation.

REACH will leave companies “between a rock and a hard place and they will need help to navigate these treacherous water,” advises Michael Grenfell, a partner at legal firm Norton Rose, specialising in competition, regulatory and EU law - in an article to feature in the July/August issue of Process Engineering magazine.

Please email your views to: patrick.raleigh@centaur.co.uk

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Patrick Raleigh
Editor, Process Enginering