The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the CRC Order has been approved by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as well by the Northern Ireland Assembly. DECC did not know when the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly would be voting on the Order.

The EA indicated that, after the national election, it is possible there may be some restructuring of central government departments and local authorities and that these bodies might take the view that they would rather wait until the later part the Registration Period (which will run from 1 April to 30 September) so that they know for sure what their new structure is going to be before the register as Participants. We will shortly be publishing a practice note on CRC issues for the public sector.

However, private sector organisations will need to register based on what their organisational structure was as at the end of 2008, subject to the rules on organisational changes in Schedule 6 of CRC Order. For more information on the rules in Schedule 6, see Flow chart: CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme: Impact of changes to private sector organisations before registration.

DECC announced that a revised version of the Draft CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (Allocation of Allowances for Payment) Regulations 2010 have been published and are due to be laid in Parliament before the summer recess. The Draft Regulations set out the detail of how Allowances will be sold in the Fixed Price Sales and through the Safety Valve during Phase 1 (the Introductory Phase) of the CRC. Under the Draft Regulations, the minimum price for Allowances bought through the Safety Valve will be £14/tCO2 instead of £12/tCO2, as previously indicated by the Government in the Response to the Consultation it published in October 2009.

For more information on the Draft Allocation Regulations, see Legal update, Government publishes revised draft regulations on the sale of CRC allowances.

DECC confirmed that there will be no separate legislation on the recycling of revenue from the sale of Allowances, as the power to make these recycling payments is already provided for under section 53 of the Climate Change Act 2008. However, DECC did say that it will be issuing the EA with "instructions" on how these payments will work in practice. It is not yet clear whether these instructions will be made available to the public.

Enforcement and auditing:

The registration auditing will be carried out by the EA's staff but the other types of auditing will be outsourced to third party contractors.

For example, if a Primary Member fails to submit an Annual Report or surrender enough Allowances at the end of the relevant Compliance Year, would the EA require one of the other members of the Group to comply on behalf of the Group as a whole? The EA indicated that it intends to pursue the Primary Member first and foremost and recover any unpaid fines or other sums from that party, but it did not discount the possibility of pursuing other Group members if this did not work.

In particular, some companies had not appreciated that if they want to apply to disaggregate one or more of their SGUs for the Introductory Phase, they must do so as part of the registration process and within the first three months of the Registration Period opening (to allow enough time for the disaggregated SGUs to register separately). After that date, it will no longer be possible to apply for disaggregation and the SGUs will therefore have to participate as part of the Group. The Primary Member for that Group would therefore need to report on, and surrender Allowances for, any CRC Emissions associated with those SGUs. The SGUs would also be ranked as part of the wider Group in the League Table.

For more information, see: