The UK climate change levy: good intentions but potentially damaging to business

Abstract

The climate change levy (CCL) is an important part of the UK Government's response to being a signatory to the Kyoto agreement. Prior to the introduction of the levy there were sharply contrasting views, which ranged from Sir Robert May's view that it was ‘an opportunity, not a threat’ to the CBI's view that it should be an option of last resort. In order to consider the impact of the CCL on UK businesses, interviews were undertaken within one ‘not for profit’ and two commercial organizations to explore reactions to its introduction. The findings from the study suggest the primary foci of concerns are based upon increases to the cost base and threats to international competitiveness. Further, there is doubt that the ambitious targets signed up to by the UK Government are likely to be achieved, unless there are fundamental changes in support for businesses, or the targets are revised. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Climate policy, ecological modernization and the UK emission trading scheme

“…Other instruments of the UK CCP are the Climate Change Levy (CCL) and Climate Change Agreements (CCAs), which were implemented prior to the UK ETS, but a discussion of these is outside the scope of this paper. For readers interested in these initiatives we refer them to the work of, e.g., Bailey and Rupp (2004) and Hansford et al (2004).…”

“…The situation is similar when it comes to the CCL, another NEPI of the UK CCP. Analysing impacts of the CCL on UK business, Hansford et al (2004) report that companies fear increasing costs and loss of international competitiveness. Contrary to the intention of policy makers, the direct participants of UK ETS have hard times finding win-win situations reducing GHG emissions while at the same time making a profit.…”

Creating the UK emission trading scheme: motives and symbolic politics

“…The announcement of the CCL and the conclusions in the Marshall report provoked a somewhat cool response from some business leaders (Smith, 2002;Hansford et al, 2004;Bailey and Rupp, 2004;HOC, 1999). In July 1999, a UK Emissions Trading Group (UK ETG) was formed by several infl uential UK businesses.…”

“…This is not a new fi nding, nor is it necessarily surprising. On an economic level, energy taxation was considered by many important fi rms to be a relatively blunt, burdensome instrument with serious cost and competitiveness implications, particularly for those businesses such as BP or British Gas that were unable to negotiate a Climate Change Agreement and an 80% levy discount (CBI, 2002;Hansford et al, 2004). In this context, emission trading would seem to be the obvious alternative to taxation, especially when considered alongside the groundwork laid by earlier discourse between government and industry (ACBE, 1998), the relative success of the US SO 2 scheme and BP's fi rst hand success with internal emission trading (see BP AMOCO, 1999).…”

The Potential Environmental Benefits of Co‐Operative Businesses Within the Climate Change Agenda

“…Governments may influence the businesses through various regulations: taxation, market regulations, subsidies and voluntary agreements (Hansford et al ., ), whereas investors, for instance, are interested in business sustainability practices, emission levels and strategies aimed to reduce these emissions. Customers become more concerned with the carbon footprints of certain products and more loyal to environmentally friendly businesses (Al‐Najjar and Anfimiadou, ).…”