For the majority of SME directors, the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme (EES) is something they will probably have heard of, but won’t be fully up to speed with — and understandably so.

Introduced by the previous Government in 2008 with the aim of reducing UK carbon emissions and helping organisations to save money by reducing their energy bills, the CRC EES is still only focused on the largest companies in the private and public sector.

But that won’t be the case for much longer. The changes that are being forced upon large companies will soon cascade down to SMEs, too. Recently the Government launched a consultation to see if the CRC should be simplified or even scrapped so that is can be replaced with another form of emission taxation that would be easier to implement.

Whether this happens or not, the momentum of the global movement seeking CO2 reduction is such that SMEs will be required to adopt sustainability strategies and reduce their own emissions sooner than they think.

Ironically, the Government recently failed to make greenhouse gas reporting mandatory for organisations that are outside of the CRC, but this is only a blip. The dilly-dallying of the Coalition Government will not prevent the structural changes that are taking place — and being co-ordinated — globally in relation to CO2 reduction, embodied in things like the Rio+20 Agreement or the EU 20-20-20 targets.

Source: dofonline