Guidelines about usage and the relationship to calculating a carbon footprint for your business or organisation are being prepared as part of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which was recently renamed the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.

The first phase of this legislation is already active and applies to all organisations using more than 6,000MWh per year of electricity (equivalent to an annual electricity bill of about £500,000).  Carbon licenses and optional carbon trading will apply from April 2011.

All energy other than transport fuels will be covered.

For water consumption there are plenty of figures around linking emissions and provision of service and they do change from year to year, in part due to differing performance of the water companies and in part due to changing reporting rules.

The regional water companies have different figures for CO² emissions but you can initially calculate on the basis of 0.59 g CO² / litre ³

For more details about options for calculating your carbon foot print Contact Demeter