Will the CRC affect my organisation?

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC) will affect large public and private sector organisations across the UK.

Likely participants will include supermarkets, water companies, banks, local authorities (including state-funded schools) and all central Government Departments.

Organisations will qualify as a CRC participant based on their half-hourly electricity usage.
If you are a subsidiary of an organisation, or part of a group, the group must act as one entity. Your highest parent organisation will normally be the ‘primary member’ who must carry out administrative actions on behalf of the group. Other organisations within the group should provide information about their energy use to the primary member. If the highest parent organisation is based outside the UK, your group must nominate a UK subsidiary to represent the whole organisation.
In the scheme, energy use is the responsibility of whichever organisation is responsible for the energy supply.

Qualification

Qualification for the scheme is based on half-hourly metered electricity usage.

Your organisation will qualify if during the 2008 calendar year it:

1. had at least one half-hourly electricity meter (HHM) settled on the half-hourly market across the whole organisation
2. had a total half-hourly electricity consumption over 6,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) once electricity used for transport and domestic accommodation has been excluded

Your electricity supplier will be able to confirm if you have any half-hourly meters settled on the half-hourly market. In the scheme, half-hourly meters include any:

• mandatory half-hourly meters
• voluntary half-hourly meters
• half-hourly light meters
• pseudo half-hourly meters (commonly used to measure electricity consumption of street furniture – e.g. street lights, traffic lights, etc)
• remotely read Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) meters that produce half-hourly data. These are not necessarily settled on the half-hourly market and therefore do not count towards the first qualification criterion

All organisations that meet the first criterion but consume less than 6,000MWh of half-hourly electricity will not qualify. They will however still need to submit information to the administrator at the beginning of the scheme. You can find more about this in the CRC energy efficiency scheme user guide.

For additional information on CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme visit www.decc.gov.uk
And  www.carbontrust.co.uk