29th January 2013  - Woking, Surrey  - SFW Ltd is delighted to announce that it has delivered a system that will facilitate the administration of the Climate Change Agreement (CCA) Scheme for the Environment Agency (EA).  The system will automate a number of previously paper-based and resource-intensive processes for the scheme and assist the CCA team in managing and administering the scheme.

Climate Change Agreements (CCAs) are part of a package of measures designed to tackle wider issues relating to climate change. This package includes the Climate Change Levy, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. The agreements are voluntary and give UK industry a £270m discount on the Climate Change Levy Tax (CCL) which is administered by HMRC. The CCL is chargeable on the industrial and commercial energy supply of consumers in the Industrial, Commercial, Agricultural, Public and Service sectors.

Climate Change Agreements were administered by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on a UK-wide basis, but given the potential synergies with the other schemes that the Environment Agency administers (CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, EU ETS and IPPC) the administration for CCAs recently passed to the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency will administer the new scheme which commences on 1st April 2013. DECC will retain the legal and policy responsibilities for the scheme.

The CCA solution is based on ETSWAP, the EU ETS Workflow Automation Project, which assists the Environment Agency in fulfilling its obligations as a regulator of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme across the UK. ETSWAP is a scalable and modular web-based solution, comprising on-line forms and workflows. It facilitates the submission of plans and reports from Operators and Verifiers participating in the EU Emissions Trading scheme to the Environment Agency. By basing the solution on the ETSWAP system, the EA has maximised cost efficiencies and opportunities to reuse architectures and code.

Speaking on behalf of the Environment Agency, Alex Hincks, Senior Project Manager, CIS Solutions Delivery, said “This system is all about maximising efficiencies and reducing costs - both in terms of streamlining the administration for the CCA scheme as well as ensuring that, where possible, the EA reuses and repurposes suitable system architecture and code in new developments.  I expect the delivery and use of the CCA Administration System to continue this theme.”

Speaking on behalf of SFW, Director, Peter Hornsby said “It is great to be working with the Environment Agency to help it deliver a system which facilitates modernisation, automation and process improvement. The CCA Administration System will help increase speed and accuracy whilst significantly enhancing the reporting capability.”

The CCA system is based on ETSWAP which SFW developed for the Environment agency to assist it in the Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification processes required for the management of UK emissions under EU law and uses .NET 4.0, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Workflow Foundation as well as Outreach by Toplevel.

The Climate Change Agreements system became live in early 2013.