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STAYING

AFLOAT

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE DROWNING

IN CLIMATE LEGISLATION

Compliance is made of
three crucial elements:
Malcolm Gray, CFO and co-founder of Libryo, discusses the understanding which
challenges businesses face with ever-changing environmental protocols apply to an
legislation in a decentralised energy market organisation, managing
operations in order
ver the past decade, the UK’s legislation is driving change at to comply with these
energy supply has diversified a fast rate, the legal knowledge regulations and auditing
substantially, from primarily to accompany this is poor. Many
coal-powered to a mix of energy regulations relate to the ‘old way’ of operations to report
O sources including off-grid doing things, so as they are being against them
generation such as micro-renewables addressed, they are changing, such
and onsite heating and cooling. Largely as the old policies on combustion
driven by legislation and a need to plants being replaced by the protocols apply to an organisation,
pivot our energy infrastructure to a Industrial Emissions Directive. Even managing operations in order to
more sustainable, less fossil fuel-based recently introduced policies have comply with these regulations and
generation capacity, we are seeing caused widespread confusion, such auditing operations to report against
large-scale power plants shutting down as the suspension of the Capacity them. With the introduction of new
in favour of more flexible, smaller Market. Importantly, decentralised protocols and an increasingly diverse
decentralised generators. energy production, such as wind and spread of different sites, possibly
The risk to the UK’s outdated solar, brings with it a broader, more across different countries, ensuring
and rigid energy infrastructure was complex range of environmental and compliance is an increasingly complex
highlighted by last August’s power health and safety regulations, newly and constantly changing target.
shortages, caused by concurrent created to address a more distributed Environment, Health & Safety (EHS)
outages at a large power station and energy solution. policies can be a jungle for risk and
an offshore windfarm. Smaller, more Other policies such as the climate compliance professionals to try and
agile configurations with a breadth of change levy, gas supply emergencies navigate, and whilst each is regulated
generation methods are modernising and the recent Energy Savings separately, they are interlinked.
the energy market and diversifying Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), are The sanction for breach of most
it. These recent shifts in approach to impacting the adherence and reporting environmental laws is prosecution
energy in the UK are part of a global required. The latter can issue fixed of an individual or company by the
trend to source alternative energies penalties of up to £50,000 per breach relevant regulator in the criminal courts
that shows no sign of stopping. and has recently published the names varying from fines to up to five years’
However, with the decentralisation of large businesses which have imprisonment. However, knowing the
of the energy market, different been fined for non-compliance and legal obligations that a business faces
methods of generation have differing subsequent failure to rectify this, with – let alone the compliance status – has
legislation and regulations. Legacy 26 firms owing more than £240,000 to to date remained very difficult, time
legislation is becoming increasingly the Environment Agency to date. consuming and expensive, particularly
outdated by the shift in methods Compliance is made of three crucial multiplied across numerous locations
of energy generation and, whilst elements: understanding which and countries in these growing multi-

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