Street Lighting Escapes From CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by Ross in Government Policy, United Kingdom

Stargazers hopeful that the drive for cost-cutting and energy saving at council level would result in the removal of street lighting, or its upgrading to more energy efficient and directional lighting technologies, were dealt a blow today as the final draft of the UK Government’s flagship cap-and-trade scheme landed in Parliament.

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, formerly known as the Carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme, is a mandatory corporate carbon trading system which will come into force in April 2010 and is now seeking final approval from the UK’s regional assemblies and from Westminster MPs.

The last draft, which arrived on the debating agenda on the 19th January, had few revisions to the document which emerged in October which saw the rebranding of the Carbon Reduction Commitment legislation to the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme in order to emphasise the government’s intention of using it to drive through energy efficiency improvements rather than renewable energy generation at a business level.

The scheme is set to include over 5,000 of the UK’s biggest energy-guzzling businesses and local authorities, and it is the latter group who have the most to celebrate from the last-minute alterations following the final consultation process.

Some applications are fed electricity on unmetered sources, usually were the usage is considered highly predictable, and is charged for under three different categories: dynamic, passive and non-half hourly. Electricity use from passive or non-half hourly unmetered electricity supplies had previously not been considered explicitly by previous drafts, but has now been declared exempt from the CRC process in terms of qualification, footprinting and annual reporting (possibly to just cut down on the paperwork that the CRC is designed to generate).

This happens to primarily include street lighting, which makes up a substantial part of most councils’ energy costs. Some councils who had been preparing for the CRC will suddenly find themselves not part of it such as Herefordshire (according to this PDF document) and will have already wasted time and money on preparing for the scheme. Other councils’ accountants will be delighted in the reduced number of carbon credits they will now have to pay for up front each year, environmental managers have been handed a brand new headache.

Replacing existing street light systems with new, more energy efficient models was a simple avenue to achieving massive carbon emission reductions for councils, such is the magnitude of their energy use. Whilst innovations such as LED lighting and intelligent sensors could have brought the biggest reductions, even simple switch-off timing solutions could have yielded strong results: Devon County Council estimate that rolling out such basic technology, currently being trialled in selected Devon car parks, across the whole of the counties street lights would save 6% of their total carbon footprint and save £450,000. However, it would have also saved £43,000 in carbon credit expenditure under the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme: a bonus not now available to them.

Whilst the economic benefits of such projects still stand up against nearly any other project on a return on investment basis, the emphasis attached to the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme means that street lighting projects will likely be left by the wayside in favour of smaller projects with lesser impacts, lower gains and higher costs. Street light projects currently under review are more likely now to be abandoned, whilst councils in the Ostrich Block have lost nothing but more money in the form of inefficient light seeping out into space when no-one is around to require it.

Don’t expect to start seeing more stars any time soon…

Want to find out whether your business will be affected by the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme? Check Somar International’s guide to the scheme by clicking here.

Update: The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is now live, but don’t waste time working out how it works: you need to hit the ground running! Find out why in our Business Reasons for Immediate CRC Action series, and be sure to check out the super-CRC-secret reason to act now.