Hospital and Man Utd in green premier league

Barnsley Hospital was celebrating yesterday after being ranked among the highest performers in the newly-published Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) league table of around 2,000 UK private and public bodies.

The CRC is a mandatory energy efficiency scheme introduced for large organisations by the previous Government. It is still in its early stages, meaning the new league table only ranks bodies for how effectively they have introduced measures to monitor energy use, such as smart meters.

The 22 organisations to have achieved the best possible score include Barnsley Hospital, Man Utd, the Department for Energy and Climate Change, Center Parcs and British American Tobacco.

John Rhodes of Barnsley Hospital said: “We take energy efficiency extremely seriously and any opportunity to save money, reduce wastage and cut carbon is an essential part of our plan.”

Other Yorkshire-based organisations in the top 50 included QHotels, whose portfolio includes The Queens Hotel in Leeds, and Asda, the best-ranked supermarket chain nationwide.

But the table suggests 40 per cent of the UK’s biggest organisations have taken no steps to monitor energy use in the past year.

More than 800 organisations scored zero points, including Bradford and Harrogate councils, West Yorkshire Police, the Home Office, Amazon.co.uk, Sheffield Hallam and Bradford universities, Skipton Building Society, Goldman Sachs and hospitals in Sheffield, York, Calderdale, Scarborough and North East Yorkshire, and North Lincolnshire and Goole.

The Environment Agency said it was “very encouraging” 60 per cent of firms are engaging with the programme. But the Engineering Employers’ Federation said the tables were “redundant” because they did not give a clear indication of the work many firms have done over the past decade.