CRC simplified to reduce costs to businesses
The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is to be dramatically simplified to more than halve the administrative costs for participating businesses and public-sector organisations. The reforms will save some £272 million for participants, and the performance league table is to be abolished.
Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, comments, ‘The removal of the performance league table is to be welcomed as we believe its metrics were not effective to incentivise improvement. While the league table performed an important function in elevating energy-efficiency decision making to board level, we think that mandatory emissions reporting could perform this function just as well. We also welcome the Government’s current approach to start with listed companies before expanding more widely.’
The scheme is to be simplified from 2013 and its effectiveness reviewed in 2016 to consider if it remains the appropriate policy to meet industrial energy-efficiency and carbon-reduction objectives.
The reforms include reducing the number of fuels that participants have to report against from 29 to two — electricity and gas for heating.
The performance league table is being abolished, but participants’ aggregate energy use and emissions data will still be published.
The overlap with other climate-change legislation will be reduced.
All state-funded schools are being withdrawn from the scheme.
