British Gas Calls For Extension To CRC Deadline

British Gas Business is calling upon the Environment Agency to extend today’s deadline for registration under the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme.

Kanat Emiroglu, managing director of British Gas Business, said he believed that more help and time should be given to get businesses over this first hurdle. He has called for an extension of two months, and said a concentrated publicity and advice campaign could improve registration rates.

Upside would be enormous

“The CRC scheme represents a huge opportunity – if we can get its implementation right,” Emiroglu said. “The upside could be enormous – equivalent to 4.4 million tonnes annual CO2 savings per year by 2020 – saving businesses £1bn in energy every year.”

It is expected that about a third of the firms expected to register will not meet today’s deadline and will start racking up fines.

“It’s therefore a concern that, with today marking the end of the CRC registration deadline, just 65 per cent of businesses expected to do so have signed up to the CRC scheme,” Emiroglu said.

He believes there are two principle factors that have contributed to such poor registration rates. The first is the apparent poor understanding of the scheme – today’s results of a recent eWEEK Europe Survey bears this out. The second problem is the “complex registration” process, he said.

British Gas willing to help

“British Gas Business is today calling for the registration deadline to be extended by two months and for communication around the scheme to be refocused in order to support businesses in meeting their CO2 reduction targets,” he suggested.

Emiroglu said that his company is doing what it can to help businesses understand how the requirements of the CRC scheme can be met.

“At British Gas Business we are also concentrating our efforts on those sectors which are falling behind, such as hospitality and leisure. The increased demand for our CRC manager product demonstrates that growing numbers of businesses are keen to reap the benefits that the CRC offers – from cost savings to reductions in CO2 emissions – but more needs to be done to help them achieve these aims,” he concluded.