SMEs worried over Government carbon emissions regulations
A SURVEY of British businesses has revealed strong concern that Government regulation to reduce carbon emissions will make the UK uncompetitive and add more cost than benefits.
The fifth npower Business Energy Index (nBEI 5), published today, canvassed senior managers and energy buyers at SMEs and large industrial and commercial firms on attitudes to energy use, costs and CO2 emissions, revealing the unease within the business community about the existing CO2 reduction framework of regulation.
When questioned about the new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) – a new carbon reduction scheme aimed at large businesses, announced last year in the Energy White Paper – 71% of intensive energy users said they believed that the scheme would make the UK uncompetitive.
And, when asked about the implementation of such regulation, 63% of respondents said they thought the costs of doing so would outweigh the benefits. Less than half (48%) believed that the CRC would achieve its target of removing 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year by 2020.
Demonstrating further concern, 75% of intensive energy users surveyed said they thought the combined pressures of the Climate Change Levy, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the new CRC – the UK's main schemes to reduce CO2 outputs from business – will place an undue burden on business.
The Government has shown a desire to involve businesses in meeting the UK's CO2 reduction targets and introduced a framework of regulation to incentivise and reward emission reduction, but npower Business's findings would indicate companies need further convincing that this is the best method. Comments from the report suggest that British businesses feel penalised as other European and global businesses do not have to conform to the same administrative and financial requirements imposed by UK regulation.
“Businesses have faced a raft of new legislation in recent years, with more now promised in the form of the CRC, so it is understandable that they may feel the responsibility to reduce CO2 is being placed at their door,” said Paul Coffey, managing director of npower Business.
“However, with the UK's CO2 emission targets becoming legally binding this year, we cannot escape the fact that all businesses will be called on to reduce their carbon footprint.”
“While the need to actively reduce CO2 has become a business requirement in only the last few years, it will increasingly become a priority as low carbon outputs become evermore linked with strong financial performance. Those that identify the advantages of low carbon operations now, and work within the existing legislative framework, will be the ones that benefit in the future,” he added.
npower Business, which is is one of the UK's top two energy suppliers to the UK business market serving more than 200,000 SNE sites and around 20,000 industrial and commercial customers, believes the framework of legislation will call on businesses to develop new business models if they are to succeed within a Low Carbon Economy, with energy use no exception.
