UK Clean Growth Strategy: What You Need to Know

October 13, 2017

Yesterday the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy published a number of legislative updates including the Clean Growth Strategy. Below is a summary of the main points.

The Clean Growth Strategy reaffirms the UK’s strong commitment to the Paris Agreement and other international obligations.
The UK government will look to ensure that the existing and future domestic policies will be as ambitious as the present EU schemes, prioritizing a smooth transition towards Brexit.

Streamlined energy and carbon reporting

The UK government has set a goal to enable businesses and industry to improve energy efficiency by at least 20 % by 2030. As mentioned in previous communications the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme will be abolished by the end of 2019. To counteract this, the previously announced Climate Change Levy (CCL) rate increases will be implemented at the same time. A consultation has been announced in order to collect feedback on the proposed details of the Streamlined Energy and Carbon reporting framework by January 4, 2018.

Share your feedback before Jan 2018

Schneider Electric recommends that businesses participate in the call for feedback to get their pain points across. Many clients had/have problems with how the Carbon Reduction Commitment works, the burden of yearly submissions, what’s in scope, how much they must pay etc, and through feedback businesses can finally officially have their voice heard and collectively make an impact.

The consultation is looking for feedback on the following points:

Companies will be required to include their emissions data within their annual reports, filed with Companies House and made available to shareholders.
Reporting will remain mandatory for all UK quoted companies, and become mandatory for either;
a) all ‘large’ UK Companies formed and registered under the Companies Act 2006 and their corporate groups,
b) UK companies who use more than 6GWh of qualifying electricity in a year, or
c) UK companies who use a different energy use threshold. Small companies and groups would potentially be exempt even if they met the 6GWh threshold.
Organisations outside the scope of mandatory reporting are encouraged to participate voluntarily.
New Mandatory reporting on Scope 1 & 2 emissions (with Scope 3 being voluntary) for all qualifying companies.
Continued annual reporting by UK quoted companies of their global Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions and an intensity metric, with the addition of reporting on total global energy use across all energy types. Scope 3 reporting would remain voluntary.
Energy use and associated emissions will be reported, and scope should be restricted to (i) electricity, (ii) gas and (iii) energy used for transport for unquoted UK companies.
Unquoted UK companies within scope of the new reporting policy will also report on an intensity metric.