SEPA imposes penalties for ETS offences

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued civil penalties to drinks company Diageo and glassmaker Ardagh Glass for emissions reporting failures

SEPA issued Diageo with civil penalties totalling more than £12,000 for falling to correctly report discharges from its bottling plant at Leven in Fife under the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS).

Ardagh Glass also had to pay civil penalties of almost £850 for similarly underreporting emissions from its plant in Irvine.

The Banbeath site in Leven had been covered by Diageo’s climate change agreement until 2008, when the opt-out ended the company subsequently failed to include emissions from heating the plant in its reportable emissions under the ETS between 2008 and 2011.

Scotland’s environment regulator used its civil power to issue penalties in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme Regulations 2005, which include a provision stating that organisations should be fined €100 for every tonne of carbon emissions they fail to report.

SEPA issued the following civil penalties for Diageo’s oversight: £2,516.12 (2008); £2,291.51 (2009); £4,206.48 (2010); and £3,099.60 (2011).

The civil penalties imposed by SEPA on Luxembourg-owned Ardagh Glass relate to its failure to report all its emissions in both 2008 (£405.83) and 2009 (£440.68).

Earlier this year, SEPA revealed that oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil had incurred a record civil penalty of around £2.77 million in 2010 for failing to report 33,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions under the ETS from its ethylene plant in Fife.