Barr Holdings ranks high on the Carbon Reduction Commitment League Table

Barr places 118th on the Government's Carbon Reduction League Table. 

This places us in the top 5% of companies and organisations who are registered in the scheme.

While we are pleased with this initial position, we do not expect to maintain it in next years table due to changes in our product mix and the energy intensity of the products sold.

We will be continuing our energy reduction programme which continues to deliver improvements in energy use throughout the business. 

What is the CRC scheme and league table?

Essentially it is the new stealth tax of £12 a tonne for all carbon emitted by businesses, government departments, local government and any other type of organisation where their electrical consumptions exceeds 6,000,000 kWh per year.

The league table is a performance ranking based on certain measurements set by government and which are intended to rate the performance of those included in the scheme.

How much carbon is recorded in the scheme? 

The initial returns include a total of 61,168,143 tonnes of CO^₂.  A lot of companies, organisations and government departments are included with a total of 2,789 individual registrations.  Average emissions are 21,931 tonnes CO^₂ per registration but the top 30 organisations based on tonnes emitted account for 26% of total emissions so the average for the large carbon emitters such as the MOD, Tesco and BT is approximately 500,000 tonnes for the rest it is around 16,500 tonnes.

How much tax will the government collect?

Based on initial returns around £750 million a year.  This is a bit misleading as around 30% of the registered organisations are government departments of one from or another.  So if you take this into account along with the high costs of running the scheme it will not be as much as one might think.

Is the league table a good indicator of carbon management?

To an extent but the scheme has shortcomings;

• It does not compare like for like businesses.
• It is based on inconsistent information.
• An expanding organisation or a contracting organisation could be unfairly treated due to the criteria used for assessment.
• Only part of an organisations energy may be reported due to other schemes and exemptions.
• League table position will not reflect changes in sales mix low to high or high to low energy content.
• The league table only reflects direct energy use and makes no assessment of the supply chain.

So on it's own it is not a good tool for measuring performance.

You can view the table at  http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/pollution/134754.aspx