CarbonLow was amongst 22 companies signing up to become early-start Green Deal Providers under an agreement described by Climate Change Minister Greg Barker as a ‘watershed moment’ in the development of the Green Deal.

Speaking at Whitehall, where the Pioneer Providers met to pledge support for the scheme, Greg Barker said:  “The commitment shown today highlights the opportunity organisations see in the Green Deal from community groups, SMEs to big business which only bodes well for the scheme’s future success.

“We will be working with these organisations to ensure they can fulfil the potential they have demonstrated today and become the first to offer Green Deals.”

Other go-early Providers include household names and energy companies such as  E.ON, British Gas, Carillion and Kingfisher as well as smaller green specialist such as Ampere Green Deal Provider and British Eco.

Peter Walden, Director, CarbonLow Group said:

“CarbonLow are delighted to be working with DECC in pioneering the Green Deal. With a background in energy performance in buildings, CarbonLow can see the potential in the Green Deal in encouraging both landlords and tenants of commercial property to make their buildings more energy efficient and cheaper to run without considerable upfront costs.

The Green Deal, which is set to launch on October 1, will enable homeowners and businesses to access loans for energy efficiency measures, which are repaid via electricity bills The Government says it will see billions of pounds lent every year and create 250,000 jobs between now and 2020.

CarbonLow is gearing up to become a one-stop Green Deal Provider for the commercial sector; in-house assessors able to recommend measures that fit within the Green Deal rules, accredited kit and installation teams and competitive finance rates plus the knowledge gained from taking part in this go-early scheme will put CarbonLow in a position to start helping businesses as soon as the systems go live on October 1^st.

Following the announcement in the budget that the CRC was either to be scrapped or simplified the DECC has today opened its consultation on how to make the unpopular scheme easier to administer.

The new slimmed-down version of the CRC is designed to cut costs by almost two-thirds and generate savings of around £330 million up to 2030.

But the consultation opened on a day when the government again shelved plans to force companies to report their carbon emissions. Defra announced that “no decision has yet been reached” on a topic it has been considering since December 2009. It added that ministers need more time to consider submissions to the latest consultation. The government was forced to make the announcement as the Parliamentary recess, which starts today, means the 6 April deadline required by the 2008 Climate Change Act would otherwise be missed.

The CBI, a firm supporter of mandatory carbon emissions reporting, has accused the government of ‘fudging’ the issue by moving it down the agenda.

CRC-made-simpler

In his Budget last week, Chancellor George Osborne threatened to replace the “cumbersome and bureaucratic” scheme with an alternative environment tax if savings cannot be found by this Autumn.

The set of proposed changes will shorten the CRC qualification process and will simplify what counts as a supply. In addition, the number of fuels covered by the scheme will be reduced from 29 to four.

The Government also plans to reduce the reporting required by cutting the number of reports that participants are required to submit and the length of time participants need to keep records.

The 92-page consultation document, which is accompanied by an administration cost analysis from KPMG and an Impact Assessment, aims to cut the burden for companies caught not just by the CRC but also other climate change initiatives by removing their obligation to take part in all schemes.

Climate change Minister Greg Barker said the Government will look to reduce the overlap between schemes at registration.

He added: “In particular, climate change agreement facilities and EU emissions trading system installations will not be required to purchase CRC allowances. Our proposals will also create greater alignment between CRC and company greenhouse gas reporting (GHG) by adopting for CRC the emission factors used for GHG reporting purposes.

“These proposals will help us meet our simplification objective of optimising the projected energy and carbon savings delivered by the CRC energy efficiency scheme while reducing the complexity and administrative cost.”

The Performance League Table will remain in place for now; the report says “Government believes that it is important to see what impact the performance league table has in creating a reputational driver for energy efficiency. We need to learn the lessons from the publication of the first couple of Performance League Tables before making a decision on whether to amend this element of the scheme.”

Mr Barker said he hoped to implement the changes so the amended legislation could be in place by April 2013.

CarbonLow Emissions can offer accreditation to their CLEEAR Standard, a Carbon Trust equivalent Standard, certified under the Carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme by the Environment Agency and which can help improve positioning in the League Table.

For more information call 0845 634 6071 or email crc@carbonlow.co.uk

Procurement officers could play a stronger role in reducing supply chain carbon by sharing the benefits of cutting emissions with suppliers.

Four in five companies fail to disclose the paybacks of reducing carbon emissions to suppliers, according to a new study from the Carbon Disclosure Project and Accenture.

While firms, particularly those in Europe and Asia, are making progress, carbon reduction advances are not being extended into supply chains.

Examples of success cited in the report included PepsiCo’s work with suppliers in Chile to help them reduce water usage by 35 per cent.

Wal-Mart was praised for assisting supplier Dana Undies to reduce its energy bill by 71 per cent by encouraging it to adopt energy efficiency measures.

However, the report did find that businesses are demanding more from their suppliers than in the past.

For example, 90 per cent of responding companies have a climate change strategy with at least general guidelines for procurement, an increase from 79 per cent in 2010.

“Suppliers are becoming more transparent about their emissions-related information, in part due to growing pressure from corporate clients,” the report states.

Companies hesitating to invest in the environmental agenda may like to consider a new report from accounting giants KPMG, which has identified 10 environmental ‘megaforces’ with the potential to derail business growth.

Climate change, energy volatility and water availability have been identified as three of the ‘megaforces’ that organisations should be aware of over the next two decades.

The KPMG report aims to put a financial value on the environmental pressures businesses are likely to face and estimates that if companies had to pay for the full environmental costs of their production now it would amount to 41% of earnings.

Climate change, water scarcity, growing populations, deforestation, energy supply volatility, material resource scarcity, wage inflation, urbanisation, food security and ecosystem decline are the top ten environmental measures to be aware of.

KPMG warned that many businesses will have to take account of the external environmental costs on their balance sheets, particularly if governments make good on pledges to scrap certain fossil fuel and water subsidies and roll out carbon pricing schemes.

The research found that the external environmental costs of 11 key industry sectors jumped 50 per cent in the eight years to 2010.

Whilst food production had the largest environmental cost footprint of the 11 sectors studied, the electricity sector faced undeclared environmental costs worth $195bn, and the oil and gas industry’s costs topped $150bn.

Yvo de Boer, KPMG’s special global adviser on climate change and sustainability, and former head of the UN’s climate change secretariat, said businesses will experience an increasingly complex relationship with the environment over the next two decades, and as such will need to develop business plans that take account of climate change and other environmental pressures.

“Without action and strategic planning, risks will multiply and opportunities will be lost,” he said in a statement.

“Corporations are recognising there is value and opportunity in responsibility beyond the next quarter’s results – that what is good for people and the planet can also be good for the long-term bottom line and shareholder value.”

Businesses that want to have the competitive edge over their rivals can now show good evidence that they are committed to reducing carbon by obtaining CarbonLow’s recently approved CLEEAR Standard.

Accredited by the Environment Agency as being a Carbon Trust Standard equivalent under the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), CLEEAR uses best practice in carbon measurement and management to benchmark companies’ carbon emissions reduction.

Depending on a business’s energy spend, CarbonLow will look at between one and three years energy data as well as details of travel undertaken in its own cars to decide whether an organisation has made an absolute or relative (against turnover) reduction in its carbon emissions; these are calculated using the latest figures from Defra. The company is also assessed against a set of management criteria to decide if it has incorporated carbon reduction into its day to day business.

Using methodology based on the Carbon Trust Standard Rules and with independent external verification, the CLEEAR Standard is robust way of evidencing a company’s carbon reduction journey.

CarbonLow’s CLEEAR Certification Manager Molly Warwick said:

“We think the CLEEAR Standard is a good way for a business to get serious about reducing carbon, whether or not they are in the CRC.

“Businesses are increasingly being asked to provide carbon credentials in tenders and pre-qualification questions.

“It is also a chance to have a look at energy data and assess whether the management is factoring carbon into its business practices.

“Whilst assessing for CLEEAR we can also advise on how to cut carbon and show businesses that this almost always leads to monetary savings in the long run.”

CLEEAR can be used by a CRC Participant as an early action metric under the CRC.

For more information about CarbonLow’s CLEEAR Standard see www.carbonlowemissions.co.uk/CLEEAR or call 0845 634 6071

A new study has found that 50% of multinationals look set to select their suppliers based upon carbon performance in the future.

Shareholder pressure is driving multinational companies to look for low-carbon suppliers, according to a new report from Carbon Trust Advisory and they are also willing to pay a premium to ensure these credentials are in place

The study of senior managers, carried out for the Carbon Trust by Dynamic Markets, found that 50% will be selecting suppliers the basis of their carbon performance in the future in a bid to cut ‘cradle to grave’ product-associated emissions.

According to the report, Cutting Carbon in the Value Chain, 29% of suppliers are likely to lose their contracts if they do not have a good carbon performance record, while 58% of the managers surveyed said that they would pay a premium for a low-carbon supplier.

Scrutiny of supply chain emissions marks the next stage of corporate responsibility, since 93% of those surveyed saying that they are already addressing their own emissions.

While 40% of companies are now looking at their indirect emissions originating from their supply chain, its importance is only likely to become more important in future. In the UK, 74% of respondents said shareholder pressure would drive greater scrutiny of the supply chain in future, while in the US the figure stands at 32%.

“Going forward, as carbon becomes more widely understood as a commodity, there will be increasing pressure from external sources, particularly shareholders, to make companies address the carbon intensive area of supply chain emissions,” says Hugh Jones, managing director of Carbon Trust Advisory.

“The rewards are there for businesses to tackle emissions in the supply chain; in the form of new revenue streams, reduced risks, emissions and costs. But the going isn’t easy and requires significant commitment,” he adds.

The research also shows the potential rewards for suppliers that can ensure their place on ‘green’ supply chains by meeting the criterion of carbon efficiency held by multinationals. Of those addressing supply chain emissions:

• 66% are willing to pay a premium of around 10% to purchase a product or service with low emissions
• 65% sell products and services that reduce the carbon footprint of their customers
• 71% procure key products from suppliers with lower carbon footprints

Telecommunications giant, BT, for example, introduced a climate change procurement standard earlier in the year for its 16,700 suppliers.

“This isn’t something that we’re obliged to do, but we see it as key to delivering on our commitments on carbon reduction while also leading broader efforts to decouple business growth from energy use and CO₂ emissions,” explains chief sustainability officer Niall Dunne.