A leading environmental lawyer has questioned the league table detailing the performance of all participants under the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC).
Published by the Environment Agency today the league table rates the performance of CRC participants against three weighted metrics: the early action metric, the absolute metric, and the growth metric.
The early action metric measures whether participants have taken voluntary steps prior to, and during, the introductory phase of the CRC to improve energy efficiency and reduce their CO2 emissions.
The absolute metric measures how a participant’s emissions have changed over the previous compliance year of the CRC compared to a rolling average, whilst the growth metric measures a participant’s change in emissions relative to its turnover.
Published annually, it will identify the names of all participants in order of performance, together with details of a company’s trading name where appropriate and its weighted scores.
The better a participant organisation has performed in line with the Environment Agency’s interpretation of the weighted metrics, the higher it will appear in the league table.
Linda Fletcher, environmental law expert at Pinsent Masons, said: “The Environment Agency has experienced practical problems in dealing with the application of the Early Action Metric to many participants annual return figures and it will be interesting to see if they now amend the rules so that the rankings going forward more accurately reflect an individual participant’s efforts to reduce its emissions.”
Commenting on the fact that the league table does not distinguish between sectors, nor the capacity of sectors to improve their energy efficiency, Fletcher said “The long awaited table shows the issues that have been raised by participants as to the need for a sectoral table as no meaningful comparisons can be easily made as to who is performing well when it comes to reducing its emissions.”
