Much has been written about the rights and wrongs of the UK's Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) legislation that requires organisations to account for their energy use and pay a new carbon tax on an annual basis from 2012.
In addition, from October this year, these CRC "participants" also face a risk to their reputation from the annual publication of footprint data detailing their CRC related CO2 emissions. Explaining why the organisation has a poor carbon performance relative to its stated corporate sustainability goals – with the subsequent effect on the organisation's credibility and brand reputation – is enough to keep C-suite executives awake at night.
But a new report, "Targeting the sustainable innovation opportunities created by the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme" published by innovation consultancy Cambium, offers early insight into the potential reputational exposure for each of the market sectors affected. Significantly, it also offers a major route for high-tech suppliers to target business opportunities through CRC.
The Cambium Index ranking categorises CRC Participants as "Leaders", "Early Majority", "Late Majority" or "Laggards" within their industry segment and provides a detailed measure of their likelihood to invest in and adopt energy saving or other innovative technologies, supporting sustainable economic growth.
The report's conclusions clearly show that the private sector has fewer Leaders and more Laggards than the public sector, whose 638 organisations score high on sustainability and social awareness. Segmentation for the scheme's 2132 private sector participants comprises 14 separate sub-sectors, for example, ICT, oil and retail. Manufacturing as the largest segment is four times the size of the next largest, and accounts for 744 organisations, though this is perhaps not surprising given the high energy requirements of manufacturing processes.
Some private sector markets only have a small number of participants – for example, water accounts for only 24 of the scheme's total participants – but as a large consumer of energy, that represents an opening for "eco-innovators" – suppliers with relevant solutions to capitalise on the sustainable innovation opportunity. This includes ICT organisations represented by the Intellect trade group.
The report's co-author, Cambium partner Tony O'Donnell, stresses that each sector needs separate treatment, so suppliers' messages must be tuned to these differences. He also believes that the report is a call to action for CRC participants, who are now going to have to live in a world of "environmental transparency", to compare how they benchmark against other organisations in the same sector.
O'Donnell believes that this new era of environmental transparency of organisations' real sustainability credentials outlined in the report means businesses will not be able to say one thing and do another. They will need to understand their position relative to their competition, and must respond or run reputational risks.
David Bicknell is co-founder of the Campaign4Change and writes a Green Tech blog for Computer Weekly
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