By David Williams
29 September 2010
The Environment Agency has said it will not ‘name and shame’ organisations that fail to sign up to its Carbon Reduction Commitment emissions trading scheme in time for tomorrow’s deadline.
The announcement came after the Treasury today became the last central government department to sign up to the CRC on the final day of registration. All Whitehall ministries were required to take part under the terms of the scheme.
The CRC, set up by the Department for Energy and Climate Change and run by the Environment Agency, is expected to involve around 5,000 large organisations from the private, voluntary and public sectors.
An Environment Agency spokeswoman told Public Finance this afternoon: ‘We will not be naming and shaming people – we want to work with businesses and public sector organisations.
‘If they have not registered yet, we will be finding out why, but we will not be putting their names into the public domain.’
Not every public body will be involved, but those expected to take part include Scottish and Welsh government departments, universities, some larger non-departmental bodies and some of the larger councils.
Although Britain’s biggest industrial polluters are already covered by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the CRC is designed to involve smaller organisations whose emissions still have a significant impact on the UK’s carbon footprint.
Each body required to take part will currently be spending around £500,000 a year on electricity, and together the participants account for around 10% of the UK’s carbon emissions.