Carbon Reduction Commitment: 60% of businesses risk £45,000 fine
Companies have just 30 days left to register or face a fine
By Anh Nguyen | Computerworld UK | Published: 12:34, 02 September 2010
Sixty percent of organisations expected to register with the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme have yet to sign up.
All public and private sector organisations that had at least one half-hourly electricity meter during 2008 have until 30 September 2010 to register with the Environment Agency under the CRC scheme, which came into force on 1 April. The scheme raises issues on IT usage, in particular data centres, which use large amounts of power.
However, as of 31 August, just 7,897 of the 20,000 organisations that the Environment Agency believes satisfy the criterion for registering under the CRC have done so. This means that 60 percent (12,103 organisations) have just 30 days to register, or face a fine.
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Eligible organisations can register with the scheme as ‘participants’, ‘non-corporate information declarers’ and ‘corporate information declarers’.
Participants are organisations that consumed at least 6,000 megawatt hours of electricity through all of their meters during 2008, which is equivalent to an electricity bill of around £500,000, and are required to participate in the scheme by monitoring their energy consumption and purchasing allowances.
The Environment Agency expects 5,000 of the organisations to register as participants, but the latest data shows that just 1,799 (36 percent) have done so as of yesterday. Meanwhile, 483 and 5,615 organisations have registered as non-corporate information declarers and corporate information declarers, respectively.
Eligible organisations who do not register by the deadline will be fined £5,000, plus an additional £500 per day for each subsequent working day they fail to register up to a maximum of 80 working days.
Greg Barker, Energy and Climate Change Minister, said: "The CRC will encourage significant savings through greater energy efficiency and importantly will make carbon a boardroom issue for many large organisations. My message to businesses today is to register now.
He added: “I understand the original complexity of the scheme may have deterred some organisations and I want to hear suggestions as to how we can make the scheme simpler in the future." Businesses can register for the scheme here.
