Environmental legislation pushed back a year

PwC has welcomed the government decision that environmental legislation
affecting approximately 4,000 business will be pushed back a year.

The first allowances sales for 2011/12 will now take place in two years in
2012 instead of next year 2011.

Henry Le Fleming, carbon policy specialist at PwC, said: “A worrying
proportion of companies covered by the scheme were behind with their necessary
preparations. So the delay in the timetable for purchase of allowances will be
welcomed by business.”

The CRC has been swamped in complexity as the legislation had numerous
changes implemented over the last year. One change in particular required
companies affected by the CRC to pay for predicted emissions for both 2010 and
2011 in April 2010. This was changed to allow companies to pay for predicted
emissions in April 2011 for the fiscal year 2011-12, therefore delaying payment
of emissions for a year.

According to spending review documents the scheme is expected to raise
£3.46bn over the next four fiscal years.

The CRC requires companies that generally spend £500,000 annually on energy
bills to forecast its future carbon emissions for each financial year and then
pay for these up front. Companies are then entered into a league table which
reveals their emissions levels and their progress. They can then receive a
rebate on the CRC rate they pay, depending on where they are ranked and how much
they have reduced their emissions.

Further reading:

Green
reporting legislation too complex, says watchdog

CRC
still too complex and ineffective

Businesses
have 18 days to register for CRC: PwC