Rising Tide Reading

Reading Rising Tide's campaign to get the town centre's shops and offices to switch off unnecessary lights at night is now under way.

Campaign Update 23rd April 2010

Jenny tackles Barclays Bank
Veteran campaigner, Jenny Nicholson, tackled Barclays Bank as to why their new branch on Broad Street always left their lights on at night. For once we got a result: the manager phoned her back to say their timer switch had stuck. The manager at this branch is commended for not being dismissive or defensive about being tackled on their energy usage. This is in contrast to the majority of office buildings previously approached, the facilities managers of which, have normally attempted to fob us off with excuses about people working late (we never see people working there).

Energy reduction plan
John Hoggett has proposed that we campaign for a law which enforces all businesses to draw up an energy reduction plan, in a similar way that they are enforced to hold fire safety tests, and health and safety audits. The idea is as much to change behaviour as to enforce modifications to the building structure or other technology. Energy efficient lights are great, but they consume even less energy when they're switched off when not needed. Why are so many computers left on in the workplace at night? Couldn't people just wear more clothes rather than ramping up the heating every winter? Getting new laws adopted is hard to do, especially with the number of legal changes coming out of DECC. If anyone has any advice on the subject, we'd be interested to hear from them.

Carbon Reduction Commitment
This is a new scheme by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Laura has written her assessment of it in one of the attachments below. We generally think it's a good thing, but wonder why only the top 5000 energy consuming businesses are included in the scheme. To be included in the scheme, your business has to use 6000MWH of energy a year. This is the equivalent of around 200 kettles on all the time. We also note that the very top emitters are not included in the scheme. They are either signed up to a Climate Change Agreement with the government, or are part of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Some other observations are as follows:

1) Whoever pays the energy bills has to sign up for the CRC. Usually this
would be the organisation itself, but it could be the landlord.

2) Both gas and electricity is included in the scheme.

3) At least 90% of the each business's energy consumption must be accounted
for and covered by either the CRC, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme or a
Climate Change Agreement. The 90% figure is for companies that have some
small, difficult-to-assess energy usages that would place a high
administrative burden to include.

4) The fine for late submission of energy usage figues is £5000, followed by
£500 per day for the first forty days. If submissions are received by then,
the fine is doubled and a publication of non-compliance is made. The date
for the first submission is in 31st July 2011.

5) Organisations are required to maintain evidence packs of their energy
usage in case of audit.

6) The first league table won't come out until October 2011.

7) Organisations that have their energy supplied via the half-hourly market
must register, but only organisations with a annual consumption over 6000MWh
qualify to be included in the scheme.

8) Consumption does not include transport, domestic accommodation or energy
use outside the UK.