Going Green

At present the Environment Agency is slowly but surely trying to understand exactly how many people should have registered for the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, whether it be as full participants or simple information disclosures. With 3,100 confirmed full participants against a pre-estimated 5,000, at the moment no one’s quite sure of the total numbers.

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Many businesses have reacted angrily to last week’s announcement regarding the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme and the new ‘green stealth tax’.

Following George Osborne’s speech at the Comprehensive Spending Review, it now appears promised rewards for improved energy efficiency generated from CRC participants will no longer be returned back to high performing organisations. Instead the government will pocket an anticipated £1 billion per year, totaling £3.46 billion between 2010 and 2015. Within the new cap‐and‐trade scheme, organisations are required to purchase CO2 allowances at a cost of £12 per tonne of CO2 emitted, coming at a considerable expense to some organisations.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE GREEN TAX

Torse has recently been in contact with the Environmental Technology Centre [ETC], a research institute at Nottingham University. The primary focus of the ETC is to provide a service to Small to Medium sized businesses whereby they are able to provide up to 5 days energy usage analysis of a business in terms of their premises and practices with a report featuring advice and recommendations at the end of this process.

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In the 21st century one of the greatest challenges we face is tackling that of climate change and global warming. It is clear that there is a link between our everyday activities and the increase in pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore the issue of climate change is one which we have to tackle thanks to protocols and policies such as the KYOTO agreement and the UK Climate Change Bill. So ‘going green’ could be used as a stimulus to help the UK and potentially the world to pull itself out of the recession we are falling into.

Job Creation?

The electricity sector currently generates a huge amount of emissions with about 75% of UK power stations being coal or gas fired. In fact electricity generation accounts for over a third of the UK’s total carbon emissions. Therefore, if the UK were to migrate to using more alternative electricity generation methods such as wind, solar and hydro, emissions would fall dramatically. This transition could also produce a huge opportunity for job creation in the Low-carbon sector.

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