Guidance

Managing your climate change agreement (CCA)

How to report your data, deal with changes to your account or organisation, and what happens if you miss or exceed targets or report late.

CCA register

Your sector association manages your account on the CCA register and will make any changes needed to your details.

Your responsible person or administrative contact can ask for 2 people to have read-only access to your account information on the CCA register. One of these must already be named on your account; the other could be a nominated consultant.

Log on to the CCA register for sector associations.

CCA: changes to your account, organisation or operations

You can change the address details for your administrative contact by asking your sector association to make the change.

For other types of changes, the Environment Agency will need to amend your agreement and issue you with a new one. This is called making a variation.

A variation is needed when:

  • an operator takes over a facility from another operator, or buys target units from another operator
  • the operator or facility name has changed, or the operator address has changed
  • there has been a structural change or a change to the extent of the eligible facility
  • errors have been discovered in the base year data used to set the target

You must tell your sector association immediately if any changes to your operations or organisation will result in a variation to your agreement. Under the terms of your agreement, they need to notify the Environment Agency within 20 working days of the change.

This page only provides a summary of the types of changes to your operations that would affect your CCA. Download the CCA operations manual for more guidance.

CCA reporting timetable

You must submit a report at the end of each target period.

Target period Target period starts Target period ends Deadline for submitting data
1 1 January 2013 31 December 2014 1 May 2015
2 1 January 2015 31 December 2016 1 May 2017
3 1 January 2017 31 December 2018 1 May 2019
4 1 January 2019 31 December 2020 1 May 2021
5 1 January 2021 31 December 2022 1 May 2023

CCA data to report

You must report specified data after the end of each target period, including one of the following, the:

  • energy used by your target unit
  • carbon emitted by your target unit

What you report depends on whether your agreement is based on a carbon target or an energy target.

The CCA operations manual shows how to calculate energy use, carbon emissions and performance against your target.

CCA: target not met or exceeded

If your target unit does not meet its target at the end of the target period you may pay a buy-out fee to make good your underperformance. This will allow your facilities to continue to receive the climate change levy (CCL) discount in the next certification period.

The buy-out fee for target periods 3 and 4 is £14 per tonne of CO2 (equivalent) emitted over your target. For example, if you exceed your target by 1,000 tonnes of CO2 (equivalent) you would get a buy-out fee of £14,000.

For target period 1 (2013 and 2014) and target period 2 (2015 and 2016) the rate was £12 per tonne of CO2 (equivalent). For target period 5 (2021 and 2022) it will be £18 per tonne CO2 (equivalent).

If you need to pay a buy-out fee, we will send you a notice with details of:

  • how much to pay
  • when you need to pay
  • how to pay
  • who to pay the fee to
  • what will happen if you do not pay

If you do not pay the buy-out fee by the deadline, we will issue you a decertification notice. The facilities in your target unit will be decertified and you will not be eligible to claim the CCL discount for these facilities.

For target periods 1 to 4, if your emissions are lower than your target, the surplus is converted into equivalent tonnes of CO2 and recorded in the CCA register. This surplus is used at the end of target periods 2 to 4 if you do not meet your targets. You cannot use surplus to make good target period 5 performance.

CCA report submission

You need to send your reporting data to your sector association. It will enter your data onto the CCA register and submit this to the Environment Agency. Further information on reporting is available in the CCA operations manual.

CCA: financial penalties

The Environment Agency may issue financial penalties to an operator that:

  • fails to report by 1 May following the end of the target period
  • fails to provide any further information the Environment Agency has requested by the deadline set
  • provides inaccurate information
  • does not tell them about any changes to their operations that would affect its CCA

The process we use when considering imposing a financial penalty is explained in annex 2, section F of the Enforcement and Sanctions policy.

Where we consider it may be appropriate to impose a penalty, we will serve a notice of intent giving the person an opportunity to make representations about the penalty within a reasonable time (normally 28 calendar days). We will take account of any representations received in response to that notice before making our final decision. Where we impose a penalty, we will provide a summary of our reasons and notify the person of their right to appeal.

If we decide to impose a financial penalty on a target unit we will issue a notice to the operator, setting out:

  • the amount of the penalty
  • the reason for the penalty
  • what steps need to be taken to remedy the matter that has led to the penalty (and a deadline for doing this)
  • how to pay the penalty

If the operator does not pay by the deadline, or fails to make expected progress to remedy the matter that led to the penalty, the Environment Agency may terminate the agreement.

We publish a summary of the penalties imposed on data.gov.uk.

CCA audits

The Environment Agency will carry out audits each year on selected target unit operators and sector associations, to verify eligibility and performance.

We will select facilities for audit either on a risk based approach, or by random selection to ensure there is a representative sample.

We will send an email to the administrative contact for those operators selected for audit. The auditor will contact the operator to agree the date of the audit.

There are 2 types of audit:

Full site audit

We will ask the operator to supply data in advance. The auditor will then visit the site to examine the data and facility in greater detail.

Desktop audit

We will ask the operator to supply data by an agreed date. The auditor will review this remotely and call representatives from the target unit on an agreed date. These audits are light touch and take only a few hours on the agreed date.

CCA further guidance

The information on this page is only a summary of how to manage a CCA. For more help you can:


CCA Team
Environment Agency
Richard Fairclough House
Knutsford Road
Latchford
Warrington
Cheshire
WA4 1HT

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Published 9 April 2014
Last updated 30 November 2020 + show all updates
  1. We have updated the CCA reporting timetable and the section on buy-out fees for target periods 3, 4 and 5.

  2. Added under section: CCA: financial penalties 'We publish a summary of the penalties imposed on data.gov.uk'. Updated link to our revised Enforcement and Sanctions policy.

  3. Page updated: the buy-out fee is now £14 per tonne of CO2 (equivalent) emitted over your target. For example, exceeding your target by 1,000 tonnes of CO2 (equivalent) would mean a buy-out fee of £14,000. For target period 1 (2013 and 2014) and target period 2 (2015 and 2016) the rate was £12 per tonne of CO2 (equivalent).

  4. Clarity has been provided to section ‘CCA: target not met or exceeded’.

  5. First published.