"Dazed and confused" by CRC regulation

London – 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.

A group of businesses met in London for the latest in a series of Sustainable Business round table debates, to discuss how they are preparing to comply with the CRC.

And the general feeling among the participants, which included business leaders from the likes of BAA, Transport for London, Asda and Cemex, was that the mechanism is still not perfect.

Among the complaints and confusion heard around the table were that the league table is unfair to those companies that have already carried out a lot of energy efficiency work. Such companies are likely to come lower down the league table than those that are just about to embark on the energy reduction programmes.

Concern was also raised about the complexity of the regulation, which has drained resources and made it difficult to communicate the impact of the scheme in boardrooms.

The discussion also highlighted fears that the CRC hasn’t focused minds of cutting energy, more on complying with a new piece of regulation. Moreover, the scheme was expected to penalise growth in industry as there is no way of normalising the emissions data.

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.

These recommendations were largely welcomed by the companies around the table, particularly the idea of having separate league tables for the private and public sectors.