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Conscious of the fact that they were moving relatively quickly and breaking new ground, the British government went out of its way to solicit feedback prior to the commencement of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. The program, which will be based on a “cap and trade” auction scheme when it really gets underway, affects some 5000 large organizations within the country. Each company spends about $500,000 per year on energy costs and are significant contributors, therefore, to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

When the program was first mooted, it was suggested that companies start buying allowances right from the beginning of the program, each allowance representing a tonne of carbon dioxide. While the organization would not actually pay these funds until the end of the first trading year, the point of payment also coincided with a requirement for them to pay the following year’s allowances in advance. This was known as a double sale of emission allowances and became very unpopular as it would have been extremely prohibitive from a cash flow perspective.

The British government is rolling out the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme in phases. The first, three year introductory phase is underway and during this time participants will be required to buy allowances at the rate of 12 per tonne. There are no limits to the amount of emissions purchasable and the actual amount required will be based on the calculations made at the end of what is being called the “footprint year,” which gets underway in the spring of 2010.

Companies now only need to pay for their emissions in advance and do not have to pay, in April 2011 as had been originally mooted, for both the footprint year and the following year.

Each April when the scheme gets underway, starting in April 2011, organizations must buy allowances from the government. The buying period lasts for the entire month and a company’s payment must clear through the bank before the allowances will be issued. The government has said that it intends to set up a registry, still currently in development, enabling all the transactions to be processed.

If additional allowances are required to be purchased by an organization in the emissions scheme, basically due to the lack of efficiency or a miscalculation, these will be available on a secondary market. Thus companies will be allowed to trade with other participants in the scheme to buy and use allowances in this way. The terms of this agreement will be between sellers and buyers and have nothing to do with the government as such.

The double sale idea was hugely unpopular and organizations are pleased to see its elimination. The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme has been charged with being overly complex anyway and the double sale was seen as a serious flaw. Cash flow arrangements in April 2011 will be essentially half of what they would’ve been otherwise.

It’s vitally important that companies become energy efficient anyway and this scheme just underlines the situation. The government will publish the league table of participants, with those who are most efficient receiving bonuses while those who have failed to perform suffering corresponding penalties. Those who show a clear initiative are already joining the Carbon Trust Standard and fitting automatic meter readers as part of a concerted effort.

Daniel Stouffer has much more information about the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme and why a visit to www.verisae.com can benefit you.

If you were to ask half a dozen people who they thought was the largest polluter in the country, the chances are that few would guess it was the federal government itself. If you think about the number of departments, all those buildings, vehicles and hundreds of thousands of employees, then you could also ask why the problem of federal agency sustainability has not achieved more publicity before?

Previous executive orders have covered environmental issues and energy matters but have never really focused on the core problem, that of carbon emissions attached to energy usage. President Obama’s executive order-514 put this problem front and center as it called for Federal departments to take responsibility for its agency sustainability.

There is little time for thought, as Obama has asked agency heads to come back to him within 90 days with their plans. He needs to know how they are going to take inventory of their emissions and what kind of plan they will put in place to monitor, report and reduce their liabilities. While this appears straightforward on paper, it is nevertheless a difficult problem.

Within the private sector, large and distributed organizations have turned to individual companies that provide solutions and software products to help them address sustainability. These solutions focus on individual asset performance and correlate all this information to form the bigger picture.

Due to the size of the federal government, any meaningful measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contain energy use and other resource wastage will have a significant and knock on effect for the country as a whole. Each employee will be impacted as these measures unfold and there is certain to be a knock on effect as agency sustainability developments spread into the community at large.

Change may indeed begin at home and environmentalists expect us all to be “green.” However, if the federal government, as intrusive as it is, fully embraces the concept of agency sustainability, it will undoubtedly force us all to do more.

While carbon emission reduction may be a primary goal, Obama’s executive order also forces federal agencies to take account of water resource usage and how they treat waste production and disposal. In addition, all future federal buildings must be constructed to fully sustainable standards.

The US has long been accused of inaction, but the Executive Order has certainly gone a long way to assuage the critics. Congress will ultimately follow with legislation forcing companies in the private sector to take more concerted action.

Daniel Stouffer has much more information about agency sustainability and how a visit to www.verisae.com will benefit you.

While the federal government will always have critics, regardless of what it tries to achieve, it appears that some of this criticism is well founded when it comes to the position of environmental sustainability. Government is the largest user of energy and emits more greenhouse gases than any other organization, yet it is largely unaware of its own footprint.

As there are so many individual departments and divisions within the government, inefficiency could be expected. These divisions often interact with each other but seem to have no central policy when it comes to resource containment. Consequently agency emissions continue unchecked.

Much criticism has been leveled at the United States government over the years as it appeared to put corporate profits ahead of environmental sustainability. The government’s position was that other countries needed to adopt a fair share of the problem or any measures to control carbon emissions would have a mute effect.

Pres. Barack Obama swept to power promising change, including the very thorny issue of sustainability. He fully realized that they have to lead by example and his first executive order focused on agency emissions, requiring each federal agency to work out the size of its carbon footprint and publish plans how to contain it.

It is certain that agency emissions are very substantial, although nobody appears to know the true size of the problem. Other major organizations around the world have stood up to the plate and revealed their responsibilities. Previous US administrations have not really address the problem, skirting around the issue, but the latest executive directive is quite clear.

Will the federal government be able to control its own agency emissions? The order may be quite clear, but it will be certainly difficult for them to calculate the position let alone take significant action. Within each agency, every single asset will need to be scrutinized and its performance well understood.

Pres. Obama has set a 10 year deadline. He expects agency chiefs to come up with a plan to reduce emissions by a considerable margin within that time. It remains to be seen how these agencies calculate their existing emission inventories, let alone make plans that can be judged against efficiency.

Large organizations around the world now realize that they can eke out a competitive advantage if they take accountability for their energy use. If they can show the important stakeholders and consumers that they are truly “green” they can benefit from the positive feedback. As Congress debates legislation covering the overall issue, the federal government will have to learn how to control its own agency emissions.

Daniel Stouffer has a lot of information about agency emissions and why a visit to www.verisae.com can be of use to you.