By David Bicknell
It seems that the league table associated with the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme is now expected to be published in November.
This blog post on Local Energy suggests that a November date is expected. That could mean the table will be out next week or alternatively, it may still be a month away.
Local Energy quoted Carl Sweeney the Operations Manager of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme at the Environment Agency, saying:
“At this time, we anticipate that the PLT will be published in November. We have agreed with DECC that we will notify participants of the publication date one week before release. There is much ongoing work in the background to review and produce the PLT as accurate as possible, so at this stage I can’t be more specific as something unexpected could delay us.”
Third parties familiar with the situation say that the Environment Agency is getting ‘a lot of calls’ on when the table will be published.
What does the league table mean? The Carbon Trust, a not-for-profit company that provides specialist support to help business and the public sector cut carbon emissions, puts it like this:
“A publicly available CRC performance league table will show how each participant is performing compared to others in the scheme. If your organisation is a good carbon performer, the league table will help give a significant boost to your organisation’s reputation, demonstrating its success in cutting emissions. Please note, however, that because of the changes announced in October 2010, there is likely to be no direct financial benefit under the CRC from an improved position in the league table.Your organisation’s league table position each year will be determined by performance in three metrics:
- Early action metric: 50% of your score is based on what percentage of your organisation’s electricity and gas supplies is covered by voluntary automatic meter readings (AMR) in the year to 31 March 2011. The other half is based on the proportion of your CRC emissions certified under the Carbon Trust Standard or an equivalent scheme. Visit www.carbontruststandard.com to find out about achieving the Carbon Trust Standard.
- Absolute metric: The percentage change in your organisation’s emissions, compared to the average of the previous five years (or number of years available until 2014/15).
- Growth metric: the percentage change in emissions per unit turnover, compared to the average of the previous five years (or number of years available until 2014/15).
The weighting of these three metrics will change over time. In the first year, early action will count for 100% of your organisation’s league table score. Over the first few years of the scheme, the early action metric will gradually fade in importance until the absolute and growth metrics receive 75% and 25% weightings respectively in 2014/15 and thereafter.
As the Carbon Trust points out, if an organisation is a good carbon performer, the league table will boost its reputation, though there will be no direct financial benefit under the CRC from an improved position in the league table.
However, when the results come out, you can well imagine a few marketing departments either keen to trumpet their organisation’s performance or, conversely, trying to shore up their company’s ‘green’ reputation.
See later story: Environment Agency publishes CRC league table
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