Tory proposals to promote employee energy saving schemes

Firms that undertake initiatives to help their employees improve the energy efficiency of their own homes would be able to count any savings against their own carbon footprint, under proposals outlined by the Conservative Party.

Speaking at the Tories' annual conference in Birmingham earlier today, shadow housing minister Grant Shapps announced a new "Carbon Co-operation Plan" designed to simultaneously reduce domestic energy bills and help firms meet their emission reduction targets.

"Why not help companies that take their corporate social responsibility seriously, to make real reductions in Britain’s overall emissions," he said. " Under a new scheme, which I can announce today, businesses will be able to improve the energy efficiency of their employees’ homes – and have that domestic carbon reduction count against their own output."

He added that the plan had already secured support from Tesco, which employs more than 280,000 staff, and would help ensure that "the nation's housing stock – responsible for so much greenhouse pollution – will be permanently improved".

However, Shapps offered scant detail on precisely how businesses that help fund employees' green home improvements would account for the resulting carbon savings, leaving experts to speculate on whether the reductions would allow firms to qualify for lower taxes under the climate change levy or would instead help them meet carbon caps imposed through carbon trading schemes such as the EU emissions trading scheme or the UK's planned carbon reduction commitment.

John Alker of the UK's Green Building Council welcomed the proposals in principle, but warned that the "devil is in the detail".

"Any ideas that encourage employers to engage with staff and promote energy efficiency has to be a good thing," he said. "But linking such measures to programmes designed to curb businesses emissions, such as the carbon reduction commitment, could be dangerous… If it allows firms to deliver savings in employees' emissions instead of carbon reductions in its own buildings then that is not acceptable – we need savings from both domestic and non-domestic emissions, it can't be either or."

The announcement represents the second major green policy announcement from the Conservatives today, after the party unveiled plans to axe proposals for a third runway at Heathrow in favour of a new high-speed rail line linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.