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7 Apr 2011

CRC Energy Supplies

After an introduction to the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, this post should give you an outline of the different types of energy supplies covered by the CRC scheme.

There are 29 energy sources covered in the CRC scheme and it is important that organisations keep a careful record of any consumption from these sources.

In the CRC, energy sources are split into core energy supplies and residual energy supplies. 27 of the 29 energy sources are residual supplies; these must be counted, but not necessarily always declared:

Fuels

CRC Electricity Meters: 

Electricity and Gas in the CRC can be either core or residual supplies, depending on the type of supply and meter associated with that supply.

A core electricity supply is a supply measured by a meter which is one of the following: 

  • settled half hourly meter
  • non-settled half hourly meter
  • a non-domestic meter
  • a dynamic supply

You are able to distinguish the type of supply by identifying the meter profile type; half hourly meters (HHM) are profile "00":

Meter_numbers

AMR meters can be read remotely and capture data on at least a half-hourly basis, while non-domestic meters are generally profile types 05-08 (05, 06, 07 and 08).

Most other types of electricity supplies are classed as residual energy supplies:

Electricity-meter-ecm

CRC Gas Meters: 

In terms of Gas, there are three types of supply that are considered core gas supplies:

  • Daily Read Meter
  • An hourly meter (remotely read AMR meter)
  • A large gas point meter

A large gas point meter is a non-remotely read (AMR or daily read) meter with a supply greater than 73,200 kWh per annum. Most other meters will be non-daily read ≤ 73,200 kWh per annum; these meters are classed as residual supplies.

Here's an example of these meters available in our ECM software:

Gas-meter-ecm

As you can see from the CRC dashboard within ECM, all relevant emissions are routed to either core or residual energy supply. The percentage gives you an easy indication of how much carbon you have to declare in your CRC footprint or annual report:

Crc_core_residual

If you would like to find out some more information about how ECM can help you comply with the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, get in touch! You can also follow us on twitter for CRC updates.

More detailed information about the rules and regulations of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme can be found on the Enivironent Agency's website.

5 Apr 2011

Electricity Bill Carbon Calculator - An adventure into sproutcore

We at Carbon Calculated always look at the advances in technology and how we can use them for developing new application for carbon calculation.

We have been experimenting with Sproutcore (Javascript MVC framework) recently and have knocked up a quick example application:

Screen_shot_2011-04-05_at_19

Electricity Carbon Calculator example app

and the code for this is open source and availble here:

https://github.com/carboncalculated/electric-bill-carbon-calculator-sproutcore

This shows how quick and easy Sproutcore and the Carbon Calculated API are to use.

 

15 Mar 2011

ECM User Permissions

We have recently implemented varying degrees of user permissions on some Enterprise Carbon Management accounts.

Permissions are accessible by administrators when clicking:
settings-> user management, then click on a user and click "edit"

New users first need accept their invite and log-in before being assigned permissions. An account administrator can then edit their profile to assign sites.

"Make Admin" means that the user will have full access to the account (all sites, reports, fuel cards etc). These users are also the only people who can add new users and set permissions on the account.

Example:

This account has five sites: HQ, Publicity, Sales, Talent Management and Distribution:

Full_permissions

In user settings, the admin assigns our data analyst to HQ and Distribution:

Ecm_user_permissions

You can assign users to one or more sites and with different privileges (site users):

  • "Hidden" means that the site and any data associated with that site is invisible to that user. 
  • "User" means that the user can view the whole site and add data, but cannot delete other users' data. 
  • "Admin" on a site means that the user has full access to that site and can add or delete data created by any user.

When the data analyst logs in, they only see the sites assigned to them:

Restricted_user

Site users cannot add, edit, or deactivate sites. They also do not have access to fuel cards or the CRC dashboard:

No_full_permissions

When site users click the "home" button in ECM, they are shown a footprint of any sites that they have access to, rather than the whole organisation.

Account administrators ("Make Admin") are the only users that have access to the organisation as a whole, fuel cards, reports, and anything to do with the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact a member of our support team or call +44 (0)20 8686 6372.

 

10 Mar 2011

CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, an Overview

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, or CRCEES is a compulsory scheme to cut carbon dioxide and improve the energy efficiency of large private and public sector organisations in the UK.

The CRC framework is designed to cut carbon emissions by up to 11.6 million tonnes per year by charging a carbon levy to nearly 3,000 organisations that are responsible for roughly 10 % of the UK's carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK’s most energy intensive industries are already covered by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) and there are cross-overs between the two systems.

The scheme was first announced in a 2007 white paper from the now defunct Department of Trade and Industry as the Carbon Reduction Commitment and renamed to the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme in April 2010.

The CRC was initially designed to aid HM Government's initial commitment to reduce UK carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, compared with 1990 levels, however in October 2008 this commitment was revised to an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050.

The CRC scheme is given legal powers by the Climate Change Act, 2008; the world’s first long-term legally binding framework to tackle the dangers of climate change, while full details are given in the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme Order 2010.

Participation 

All organisations that were supplied with electricity from a settled half-hourly meter in 2008 qualify for the scheme, however, only those organisations that had at least one half-hourly meter and consumed over 6,000 MWh (megawatt hours) of electricity supplied on the half-hourly market are required to participate in the CRC scheme. Additionally, in order to lead by example, all UK central government departments and devolved administrations must participate in the CRC as “mandated participants” no matter how much electricity they consume.

Administration of the scheme is carried out by the Environment Agency who handles registration, reporting and carbon credit transactions via the online CRC registry. Participants can be audited by one of the UK’s regional environment agencies.

CRC Timeline

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRCEES) is split into phases. There is a qualification year prior to each phase and participants must submit a footprint report at the start of each phase of the CRC. For the remainder of the phase, organisations must submit a less detailed annual report and buy and sell carbon allowances each year. A performance league table will be published each year with organisations ranked using various coefficients, including the “early action metric”. The CRC reporting year runs from April 1st to 31st March, and organisations must submit reports to the CRC registry by the last working day of July each year.

In July 2012 participating organisations will surrender carbon credits for the first time, priced at £12 per tonne of CO2. These allowances were initially to be recycled and paid back to the best performing organisations, however in October 2010 the Government revised this and will now retain all revenue from participants. This effectively makes the CRC scheme a straight carbon tax on energy emissions.

CRC timeline supplied by the Department of Energy and Climate Change:

Crc_timeline_decc

CRC timeline supplied by the Environment Agency:

Crc_timeline_environment_agency

How can Carbon Calculated help?

Our Enterprise Carbon Management software covers all the rules and regulations of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRCEES), allowing you to automatically capture, manage and report  your organisation's CRC emissions.

For more information contact us and follow us on twitter for CRC updates.

 

4 Mar 2011

Monitoring Real Time Energy from Appliances

The Carbon Calculated ECM (Enterprise Carbon Management) software allows realtime monitoring of your energy usage from a variety of monitoring appliances. Today we recieved the brand new Current Cost EnviR energy monitors for testing and so we can add them to the list of supported devices for ECM.

Img_20110304_145518

Here at Carbon Calculated we are quite excited about the new release of the EnviR monitors as they are priced at a level which is affordable to hook up entire organisational supplies, can hook into a ethernet bridge so direct transmission to the ECM system as well as the advent of a new LED monitor which is more accurate than the clamps.

We have been told by the guys at Current Cost that they will be introducing both water and gas usage shorty to work wth the EnviR, as well as multi-input support to web meaning that you will be able to hook up multiple meters to the base and transmit them all from the same base straight into your site on ECM.

 

 

 

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