Companies to report emissions under UK climate bill
London, 30 October: The UK government on Tuesday passed its landmark Climate Change Bill, including amendments that will require companies to report on their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2012.

“It will make us the first country in the world to enshrine in law binding climate change targets that are stretching and ambitious,” said Ed Miliband, energy and climate change minister, in introducing the bill’s third reading.

Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favour of new clauses to the bill, first introduced last November, which would require the government to create rules for company emissions reporting by 2012, or explain to Parliament why such rules have not been created.

Many industrial and power generating companies already report their emissions under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Large commercial and public-sector organisations will be obliged to report emissions under the UK’s forthcoming Carbon Reduction Commitment, a cap-and-trade programme scheduled to start in 2010. However, the bill will extend reporting much more widely.

The Aldersgate Group, a coalition of companies and NGOs lobbying for high environmental standards, said that the move would “give certainty to the business community, and attract the significant wealth creation and jobs that London’s role as the carbon finance capital of the world would deliver”.

But the Federation of Small Businesses warned that the bill will impact small businesses, “for whom the long-term risks are increased costs and loss of revenue”.

Other amendments to the bill include increasing the UK's 2050 reduction target to an 80% cut in GHG emissions, compared with 1990 levels, from a 60% target in earlier drafts. MPs also voted for provisions to extend its scope to include aviation and shipping emissions deemed to come from UK sources.

The government will consult next year on how corporate GHG emissions should be defined and measured, the results of which will form part of the reporting guidance for the bill that the government must publish by 1 October 2009, said Joan Ruddock, Parliamentary Under Secretary in the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change, during the debate.