June 14, 2004—British consumers say they are prepared to accept price rises from companies that comply with new legislation to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, known as the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). According to a study by LogicaCMG, global provider of IT services, nine out of 10 consumers are in favor of the new regulations and more than half (54%) said if prices increased by 10% they would still support the regulations. One in six consumers said they would be happy to accept price rises of up to 25%.
The research reveals that consumers will “vote with their feet” if companies fail to comply with new “green” legislation. One in three consumers say they will switch brand allegiance on environmental grounds if a company they regularly buy goods and services from fails to comply. Furthermore, 8% say they will complain to friends and family about any company that fails to meet the deadline, while one in ten consumers warn they will even protest against the offending company. By contrast, 35% of businesses don’t think that consumers will care if they comply with new CO2 regulations.
ETS will impose prescribed targets for reducing CO2 emissions on companies from a variety of industries from power generation to building materials production. The study suggests that although three quarters of companies will make every effort to reduce CO2 emissions, more than half of UK companies are not going to be ready in time to comply with legislation. These companies are not only facing a consumer backlash but also fines running into hundreds of millions of Euros. Penalties for the largest emitters could run into hundreds of millions of euros—at EUR40 per ton of unauthorized CO2 emissions.
In partnership with environmental specialist CarbonSIM, LogicaCMG provides companies with its “EMISSIONS logic” solution to manage compliance. EMISSIONS logic tracks CO2 emissions and compliance against obligations and can help with evaluating strategies and projects for emissions reduction, as well as generating internal and external regulatory reports.
