In developing a Carbon Reduction Commitment action plan, the first thing that any organisation will need to do is to understand their liability.

The 'Organisation'

The full organisational structure of any company will need to be ascertained to identify whether or not it will be required to enter into the carbon reduction commitment scheme.

Total Half Hourly Electricity Consumption

Organisations will need to assess all the consumption from their half hourly electricity meters during 2008 to calculate whether or not they exceed the 6,000 MWh threshold.

Exemptions

whilst the carbon reduction commitments does not officially start until April 2010, there is still a large amount of work that many organisations may have to do prior to that date.

Identify organisational structure

Whilst qualification for the Carbon Reduction Commitment determined by electricity use, it aims to capture all non-transport energy consumption. As a result, if you're in the Carbon Reduction Scheme, you will be required to report on electricity, gas, oil, diesel etc.

Core sources in the CRC includes all half hourly metered electricity, profile class 5 to 8 electricity, daily metered gas and non-daily metered gas over 73,200kWh per annum.

The British government is committed to reducing carbon emissions within the UK by 60% by 2050, in comparison to 1990 levels. As part of this commitment, in 2001 the government targeted energy intensive organisations to reduce their level of carbon emissions under the Climate Change Agreement. Subsequently, from 2010 the largest non-energy intensive organisations will be targeted via the Carbon Reduction Commitment.

The Carbon Reduction Commitment (recently renamed the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme) has now officially started, and is the UK's first mandatory carbon trading scheme. The initial phase of the CRC is compulsory for organisations that consumed over 6,000 MWh (6,000,000 kWh) of half-hourly metered electricity during the period from January 2008 to December 2008. At today's prices, this is roughly equivalent to total half hourly electricity bills of approximately £500,000 per year.