We are delighted to announce that at short notice, Ellie Horwitch-Smith of Faithful & Gould has agreed to talk on this subject.

The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) is a new mandatory emissions trading scheme starting in April 2010 that will affect organisations in both the public and private sector that are large energy users. Discover how this may affect your business.

The business and public sectors generate over one third of UK CO2 emissions. The establishment of Climate Change Agreements and the EU ETS has created a real incentive for reductions within energy intensive industries. Now, a new cap and trade scheme will provide incentive for significant carbon abatement in other, non-energy intensive sectors, delivering bottom-line financial benefits.

The new emissions trading scheme (called the Carbon Reduction Commitment or CRC) will cost-effectively deliver carbon emissions reduction and cost savings in the service sector, public sector and other less energy-intensive industries. The Government announced its decision to implement this new scheme in the Energy White Paper published in May 2007. It aims to reduce carbon emissions in large non-energy intensive organisations by 1.2 million tonnes of carbon per year by 2020.
The CRC will be a mandatory emissions trading scheme, targeting emissions currently not included in the EU ETS or Climate Change Agreements, from up to 5,000 large organisations.

This scheme will include, for example, supermarket chains, hotel chains, office-based corporations, government departments and large local authorities. In its current proposed format, the CRC will cover all organisations whose electricity consumption through half hourly meters is greater than 6,000MWh/yr – equivalent to an annual electricity bill of ~£500k. All energy other than transport fuels will be covered, such as electricity, gas, fuel and oil. During a planned introductory phase, due to start in April 2010, all allowances will be sold at a fixed price. From April 2013, allowances will be allocated through auctions with a diminishing number of credits available over time. Participants will also potentially be able to buy EU ETS allowances to comply with their emissions cap – this would be a buy-only link to effectively create a price ceiling for credits in the CRC.

(There is a high demand for these briefings so we kindly request that you send no more than two people from each organisation, to ensure that more organisations benefit from these. Thank you for your co-operation)