Failing to reduce carbon emissions will now be even more expensive than previously anticipated following the changes to the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) in the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review.
“With no hope of a refund on carbon allowances as a reward for reducing emissions, the CRC has effectively become a carbon tax,” noted Causeway’s David Bell. “Furthermore, the need to buy two years’ worth of allowances based on 2011 emissions figures means that managing energy consumption is financially, as well as environmentally, critical. Doing so cost-effectively requires specialist tools that minimise the administrative burden and maximise opportunities to reduce emissions,” he added.
Causeway’s new CRC software module reduces the time required to collate energy data and understand performance by as much as 90%, offering a typical return on investment of just a few months.
“Understanding energy consumption in fine detail is the key to managing it effectively and the new CRC module makes that very quick and easy, so weeks of work can be reduced to a couple of days,” David Bell explained. “It also facilitates reporting on both financial and carbon performance, including projected future costs, to help with energy-saving investment decisions,” he continued.
The CRC module is the latest addition to Causeway’s web-based Sustainability iQ sustainability management system. Its functionality ranges from initial entry, storage and auditing of all required information, calculation of carbon footprint and management of scheme participation and trading costs through to tracking of performance trends.
The module also enables accurate prediction of future costs, with powerful reporting features – including automatic production of evidence packs when required for Environment Agency audits.
The CRC module can also be easily expanded to encompass other areas of sustainability management using Causeway’s Sustainability iQ software. It is provided as remote-hosted Software as a Service to minimise local hardware requirements and IT support. It is procured through a competitive monthly fee that can be met from revenue budgets, so there is no capital outlay.