§ The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Michaell Meacher)Following announcement of the Climate Change Levy, an energy tax that came into force on 1 April 2001, the Government agreed that companies in energy intensive industries could enter into 10-year energy efficiency agreements in return for an 80 per cent reduction in the levy rate. Forty-four sector associations signed agreements, representing over 5,000 companies, who operate over 12,000 individual facilities.
The first target period ended on 31 December 2002 and companies that met the terms of their agreements were re-certified on 1 April 2003 for the reduced rate of Levy payments for the two forthcoming financial years.
There were a total of 5,742 "target units" in the Agreements when the results were submitted by sector associations in February 2003. (A target unit is one or more facilities that share a single target) Overall, 5,042 target units were re-certified, or 88 per cent. of the total. This represents a total of 10,500 facilities. Of the 700 target units that were not re-certified, 581 dropped out of their agreement or did not return information to their sector association and 219 failed to meet their targets.
The CCAs as a whole saved 13.5 million tonnes of CO2 (3.7 mt Cartoon1) against an estimated 2000 baseline, or 15.8 million tonnes of CO2 (4.3mt C) against pre-CCL baselines. This is 10m tonnes more than projected. However, a large majority of this reduction came from the steel sector. Even without this contribution the other sectors have exceeded their targets by almost 1 million tonnes of CO2.
If the sectors with energy efficiency targets had produced their 2002 output at their efficiency in their baseline year they would have emitted an extra 5.2 million tonnes of CO2. This demonstrates real gains in energy efficiency.
Companies were able to purchase allowances in the UK emissions trading scheme in order to help meet their target, and 600,000 allowances were bought and retired this purpose. Companies were also able to convert any over-achievement into allowances that can be sold or used against future targets. A total of 4.0 million tonnes of CO2 has either been sold or retained for future use, subject to independent verification.
A summary of the performance of the sectors is attached. A full analysis is available in the document Climate Change Agreements—Results of the First Target Period Assessment and at http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/ccl/results.htm. Please note that this is a preliminary analysis at this stage. Defra will continue to update this document when more complete analyses have been completed.
1The UK Climate Change Programme uses units of carbon rather than CO2 to measure greenhouse gas emissions, so both units are presented here.14WS The performance by sector is given in the following table.
Sector Number of Facilities Re-certified ‥ of target units re-certified Absolute Saving kt(CO2) (a) Aerospace 21 100% 15 Aluminium 57 100% 2000 Craft Baking 2967 100% -9 Brewing 62 100% 29 Cement 17 100% 1600 Ceramics 223 97% 188 Chemicals 285 100% 2000 Cathode Ray Tubes 3 100% 21 Dairy Industry 133 99% 35 Egg Processing 9 100% 1.9 NFU—Eggs 277 68% 53 Eurisol (Mineral Wool) 6 100% 8.9 Food & Drink 1081 100% 160 Foundries 217 95% 139 Glass 45 100% 39 Gypsum Products 6 100% -21 Leather 11 100% 6 Lime 8 100% 170 Malting 33 100% 4.2 Poultry Meat Processing/Feed 81 98% -30 British Meat Fedtn 185 97% 27 Metal Forming 107 100% 23 Metal Packaging 23 95% 18 Motor Manufacturers 19 100% 36 NFU—Pigs 608 100% 64 Non-Ferrous 111 100% 130 Paper 84 100% -930 NFU—Poultry Meat 520 83% 53 Poultry Meat Rearing 1050 99% 72 Printing 105 96°A -22 Rendering 20 100% 14 Reprotech 1 100% Rubber 8 100% 171 Semiconductors 18 100% 60 Slag Grinders 6 100% 3.5 Spirits 68 100% 42 Steel 60 100% 9400 Supermarkets 1342 100% 5.7 Surface Engineering 187 100% 29 Textiles 153 100% 114 Agricultural Supply 178 100% 23 Vehicle Builders And Repairers 60 100% 0 Wallcoverings 15 100% 28 Wood Panel 9 100% -22 Total 10,479 15,749