Carbon Reduction Commitment

On April fool's day 2010 The Department for Energy and Climate Change introduced it's new carbon reduction commitment (CRC) scheme.

This requires 25000 of the country's largest energy users to register with the Environment Agency.

It is part of the plan to reduce the carbon emissions of the United Kingdom by 80% by 2050(compared with 1990 levels) as is reqired by the Climate Change Act 2008.

The scheme will apply for example to major retailers, hospitals, local authorities, universities and large offices.

The government expects that initially the CRC will apply to 5000 entities which use more than 6000 megawatt hours of electricity in a year.

These companies will have to pay 12 pounds for each ton of CO2 they emit.

There are large penalties for failure to register and a whole army of officials is to be created for enforcement purposes.

Undoubtedly this will be a massive money spinner for the government and who do you think is the ultimate payer?

At a time when the UK's present carbon emissions amount to 2% of the whole world's output is this scheme anything other than a new stealth tax on the working man?

For more information on the scheme and who precisely is affected see:-

http://www.scribd.com/doc/30396686/CRC-Pamphlet