==== Guest Commentary ==== 

The RIBA building in central London has provided an imposing backdrop for an equally imposing discussion today (overview here). That being, how can 20,000 UK based organisations manage down their CO2 emissions in line with the Carbon Reduction Commitment? The key message? Organisations need to be working this out right now, rather than waiting for the final registration date next April.

Today’s discussion was kicked off by Terrence Clark, SVP and GM of CA ecoSoftware and a regular contributor to this blog, who alluded to the converging forces of Copenhagen, the CRC and the Obama effect, all adding to the increased pressure on organisations to first capture, then measure, then act upon data about their carbon emissions.

Some 5,000 companies and government organisations in the UK will have to comply with the CRC and a further 15,000 will be required to report against it. In essence, any company with energy bills of over half a million pounds needs to act. The challenge, as Terrence puts it, is that like consumers, we all have the ability to change our habits but we don’t have visibility of the facts.

Areas of a business where there is high level usage of energy, such as IT, only account for about 2% of emissions. These areas are fairly well managed but the other 98% needs to be reined in quickly and accurately.

Harry Morrison, General Manager of The Carbon Trust added to the debate with the point that if the UK is going to make its 80% carbon reduction target by 2050, this means a 2-3% reduction in greenhouse gases per year from today. Massive energy users like power generation companies are already regulated, but significant ‘low energy users’, essentially most other large organisations from NHS Trusts and metropolitan authorities through to retailers and banks, are what the CRC is designed to cover.

Morrison affirmed that these organisations need to be finding a way of monitoring and reporting before the April 2010 compliance deadline. By then they will have needed to establish an accurate picture of their carbon emissions and changed business processes in response. The inclusion of a CRC league table, highlighting each organisation’s absolute reduction in real terms will be quite a motivator!

But the figures already speak volumes. Morrison outlined that an organisation with a footprint of 100,000 tonnes of CO2, typically with a £15m energy bill, will need to purchase £1.2m of carbon credits per year with the addition of a bonus or penalty in the region of £240k.

So the experts are saying act now, why wait. In the next post we will hear about how one leader in carbon reduction, Tesco, is doing it and where the rest of those needing to comply are up to.

- Geoff Kelly, CA