Will BT’s Wind Farm Come To Grief?

“They are saying that if you accept a financial incentive delivered through a renewable obligation certificate, then you cannot count that electricity as zero carbon in your carbon footprint,” said Tuppen. The government’s argument is that this stops companies counting carbon reductions twice, but Tuppen says that, for any company except a generator, it “shoots the business case completely away. You just wouldn’t do it.”

Even though the government may be strictly correct in ruling that BT cannot count its carbon reduction twice, Tuppen said it was wrong in spirit – and would slow the move towards renewable energy. “The government needs every possible way it can get renewable electricity. Power utilities are not going to build on other people’s sites; they are only interested in large wind farms.” Ironically, renewable energy works better if the generation is distributed, so there should be more incentive for companies like BT making their own electricity, he said.

The CRC cap-and-trade scheme also needs a lot more thought, he said: “All large energy consuming companies that aren’t already covered by an emisssions-trading scheme will go into a cap-and trade system from 2010 onwards. If any organisation has a consumption greater than 6000MWhr per annum, it will have to buy the right to use that energy. At the end of the year, you get back an amount back that depends on how well you have done compared to others in the scheme.”

The scheme is a good idea, said Tuppen, but nobody realised it would clash with the ROC scheme: “It shouldn’t have unintended consequences.”

Learning from BT’s example

BT’s energy use is a complex matter. Half its energy use goes on running the network and removing the heat produced by its computers, from its data centres and offices, said Tuppen. The company has worked to reduce the energy used in its networks, and data-centres.

It has also reduced the power used by its products, including lower energy phones to go into homes and offices.

All this is merely a step towards what we all have to do, said Tuppen: “According to the climate change committee, electricity in the UK by 2030 must be less than 15 percent of the carbon intensity it is today [it will required 15 percent of the grams of CO2 per kWH],” he said.

That’s not an over-ambitious target, it’s necessary, said Tuppen: “We’ll have to drop 90 percent if the UK is going to meet its carbon reduction obligations.”

BT’s experience is there as an example to others – and the company is making it available as a service, to organisations wanting to carry out their own carbon impact assessment: “Any organisation can do this,” he said. “We are offering our expertise to help a company build the pie chart of their carbon impact – and offer suggestions as to how they might reduce it.”

For more on BT’s Carbon Impact Assessment service, click here.