Climate Change Agreements: Data Centres
The Chancellor George Osborne has granted a concession to Britain’s data centre industry by allowing it to step outside other green taxes and form its own agreement to reduce emissions, while still remaining competitive against the industry in other nations.
The government intends to introduce a climate change agreement for the data centres sector by the end of this year.Data centres will now join over 50 other energy intensive sectors in the scheme, which has been running since 2001.
The climate change agreement (CCA) will reduce taxes on the sector, in exchange for meeting agree efficiency targets. The idea is that high taxes would have made it harder for Britain’s data centres to compete against foreign rivals. The British tech industry body, techUK, welcomed the decision, having fought for a CCA for the industry for some time.
Under the CCA, the sector agrees efficiency targets, at levels where the cost won’t make the businesses uncompetitive. There are around 50 CCAs in operation to date, but the data centre industry’s is the first CCA in a sector which does not manufacture physical objects, techUK pointed out today. The argument took a long time, even though to techUK it has been obvious that data centres face even greater competition since “data is the most mobile commodity on earth”.
The government will also introduce a mixed use exemption from the climate change levy for solid fuels used in certain gasification processes.
Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC): Allowance Prices For 2014-15 – CRC
The CRC Energy Efficiency scheme has published a note on the confirmation of allowance prices and information regarding the Phase 2 April forecast sale. We have reproduced this note below.
Confirmation of allowance prices for 2014-15
The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement was announced yesterday on Thursday 5 December. In the statement the Chancellor confirmed the cost of CRC allowances for 2014-15 will be priced at £15.60 per tonne of carbon dioxide in the forecast sale and £16.40 per tonne of carbon dioxide in the buy to comply sale.
Registration for Phase 2 window is now open.
Register by 31 January 2014 Registration for Phase 2 is now open. Organisations which qualify for Phase 2 of the scheme must register by 31 January 2014.
