Posts Tagged ‘regulator’
With the anticipated release of the Department of Climate Change’s white paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) (due Dec 15), many questions remain around the role and characteristics that the regulator will play, both in carbon trading and also in the implementation of NGERS. It’s a shift the industry will need to make quickly — from design to implementation. Here are some of the signifincat questions that need to be asked:
Big stick or enabler?
Will the regulator be solely responsible for monitoring compliance against the legislation and look for those who are not meeting their obligation, or will they look to become a source of information that supports the process?
Cost recovery
A report completed by the CSIRO entitled “Growing the Green Collar Economy” in June 2008 has estimated that over 3 million green collared workers will be required to help reduce our national carbon footprint. This is across all industry but what about in the case of the regulator? New roles will need to be created to administer the implementation of NGERS. These do not exist today and therefore will be an additional cost to government — which poses the question — how will this cost be recovered?
Size of the regulator
NGERS estimates the threshold coverage is 700 companies. How many staff will it take to regulate the industry?
Audit framework
Work is currently underway to define the auditing framework and guidelines required for NGERS and the CPRS so while legislation has already been implemented the actual regulation is now playing catch up — what is the role of the regulator versus the external auditor?
Workflow
What system will be implemented to support the workflow of submission, follow up, compliance, tracking, reviewing and monitoring? The implementation of the regulatory process needs to be defined in detail and then supported with appropriate tools to ensue the long term efficiency of the system.
Training
The guidelines have been produced and they are predominately based on the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064. The GHG Institute provides training for organisation and project level carbon accounting under this protocol within an online environment. The questions remains though — how do both industry representatives and, more important to this discussion, the regulators, get the required training within the right time frames?
