Wednesday 30 June 2010
Warning over today's CRC deadline
Many organisations risk missing today's deadline to disaggregate their subsidiaries from their parent company under the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme.
Disaggregating means that dissimilar organisations within the same group can be separated, to prevent one being unduly influenced by the other.
Latest Environment Agency figures reveal that fewer than 10% of those organisations that will be included in full in the CRC have registered for participation.Those still to register are also now at significant risk of missing out on disaggregating, which requires completed registration by today.
Energy firm npower is among those now warning firms of the financial and reputational dangers they face if they do not meet CRC deadlines.
Dave Lewis, npower's head of business energy services, said:"The disaggregation option might seem like a simple administrative task, but it could potentially be a valuable route for many businesses.CRC participation is typically established at a group level, but being able to register companies separately could make collating data and submitting ongoing evidence packs simpler.
"There's also the reputational benefits to consider. If the parent company's name is little known publicly, for example, it could miss out on the brand value of a high position in the CRC league table.
"Bearing in mind the registrations that have been completed to date, we expect many to miss out on disaggregation, and instead be faced with managing CRC at a group level. This will bring its own challenges as data will need to be compiled and submitted for the whole group.
Lewis added that the slow rate of registration so far indicates that many organisations may not have been actively tracking their energy use from April 1 this year in preparation for the end-of-year footprint report.
"The longer organisations take to track this, the more challenging the task will become," he said.
Any participant that misses the final registration deadline of September 30 will incur an immediate fine of £5,000, plus an additional £500 per working day past the deadline, up to a maximum of 80 days.Non-compliance will also be published.
