Best Foot Forward

From April 2010 around 5,000 businesses will need to comply with the ‘little known and complex’ (according to the FT) piece of legislation – the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). It is a mandatory ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme which will apply to any business using more than 6,000 MWh of electricity. It means that businesses will have to carry out a ‘carbon footprint’ of their operations, buy enough ‘allowances’ to cover those emissions, then try to recoup a percentage of that cost by being placed high in the CRC emissions reductions league table. To encourage action, by year 5 of the scheme, the best performers will get back their allowance expenditure and a 50% bonus - while the worst will only get back half their money.