Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC)

It is imperative that organisations act now to understand how they will be affected by the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) and achieve a smooth entry into the scheme, optimise their compliance strategy and gain a competitive advantage. Sustain offer a CRC support service which can provide:

- Guidance to participants on the complex implications/issues of the CRC on businesses such as Landlord/tenants, budget forecast for the CRC, necessary energy and emissions reporting mechanisms and processes, performance league table position, internal cost allocation and recycling payments allocation
- Review and audit of existing CRC strategies
- Compliance administration service standing up to external verification based on experience gained within the EU Emissions Trading scheme (EU ETS)
- Energy and emissions Forecast model to support the internal settlement of carbon allowances at the beginning of the CRC year
- Carbon cutting model to help clients to make confident and robust choices, considering both the environmental and financial impacts, on the various energy/emissions reduction options
- Optimum planning for carbon cutting strategies which will ensure a good position within the CRC performance league table year on year
- Management, implementation and delivery of energy/emissions reduction options

The CRC is a mandatory cap and trade scheme to improve energy efficiency and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the UK. The scheme, starting in April 2010, will cover large public and private sector organisations, which are responsible for about 10 percent of the UK's emissions. This will affect around 20,000 organisations and yours could be one of them. Organisations are eligible for the CRC if they have at least one half-hourly electricity meter (HHM) settled on the half-hourly market. They also qualify if their total half-hourly electricity consumption exceeded 6,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) during 2008. The scheme will be managed by the Environment Agency and will deliver:

- A market price on CO2 emissions: During the initial phase of the CRC, the price of carbon allowances will be fixed at £12/tonne CO2, with no cap on the amount of carbon allowances that can be purchased. The second phase of the scheme, starting in 2013, will cap the number of allowances available and their price will be set by the market.
- A public performance league table: Each CRC participant will be ranked in a public league table.
- Recycling payments: The recycling payments will redistribute the money to the CRC participants according to their position within the performance league table.
- Director-level sign off:  The government has mandated that each CRC participants annual emissions submission to the scheme regulator must be signed off by one of its Directors as registered with Companies House. Organisations failing to comply legally with the scheme will face financial and other penalties.