Keeping track of the CRC EES
The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme makes it vital to be able to track energy use — which will bring its own benefits, as Lisa Wilkinson explains.
The introduction of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme has been surrounded by misunderstandings in the business world. How will it affect my organisation? How will it work? And what can I do? These were, and still are, some of the questions frequently asked by companies across the UK.
Ultimately the introduction of CRC aims to ensure a business’s energy use is properly recorded and subsequently lowered — helping organisations to reduce unnecessary overheads, which will have a positive impact on their business’s bottom line.
Embracing this new scheme can provide a springboard for every business to take more control over their energy management. The message is simple: reduce and be rewarded, waste and be penalised.
From April 2010 the CRC, which is the UK Government’s first mandatory emissions-trading scheme, will calculate an organisation’s annual energy usage and fine excessive users with monetary charges based upon their overall carbon consumption in 2008. Businesses with energy consumption greater than 6000 MWh a year (equivalent to £500 000) are included in the CRC scheme and will be required to purchase carbon allowances for the amount used through the 2008 qualifying year.
The overall purpose of the CRC is to help large non-energy-intensive companies to reduce emissions and thereby save money through improved efficiency. It is expected that the scheme will affect around 20 000 businesses in the UK, including Government departments, retailers, banks and local authorities. All UK businesses falling in to the CRC catchment must ensure that their annual usage in 2010 and onwards falls within the carbon allowances set for their organisation.
In the run up to CRC’s implementation t-mac technologies has worked with many organisations, helping them understand how CRC will work and how they can control their own energy usage to avoid penalties that would have a significant impact on their bottom line.
The key to penalty avoidance is simple; it is about taking control of monitoring and recording energy use in the business and implementing a number of easy measures such as installing smart metering devices with CRC measurement and management software to do this for you.
T-mac added a CRC monitoring feature to its t-mac software suite last year which allows businesses to compare daily consumption figures against carbon credits purchased to ensure they do not over-use.
T-mac can monitor energy data from all utilities in an organisation, at all sites of the business. C onsumption can be totalled or broken down on a site-by-site basis. It provides a live and online measure of carbon usage, complete with benchmarks and other analytical tools. It is an ideal portal for a company to assess opportunities for improvements and through setting control tasks reduce excess consumption and waste (boiler, lighting and air conditioning control). Businesses can establish a year-on-year reduction in CO2 emissions, purchased carbon allowances and, equally as important, reduce expense.
Such systems offer a visual measure for businesses to give a clear picture of energy consumption and produce the reports which will be necessary for auditing and annual CRC submissions. Further, these systems can generate information needed for corporate sustainability reports within the organisation
With businesses being rated against all other companies within the CRC, the pressure is on to ensure they are in control of their energy management. Some businesses will receive bonuses and, of course, others will be penalised depending where they feature on the ‘leader board’. A monitoring system can help all organisations reduce and control their energy consumption and ultimately enable them not only to assess their position on the public league table but determine it.
Lisa Wilkinson is a director of t-mac Technologies Ltd.
