LAST week, the Environment Agency published the first performance league table under the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme.

You may remember that CRC commenced in April, 2010, and has effectively become a tax on carbon emissions for medium and large-sized private sector and public sector organisations.

The performance league table is a key driver for CRC, naming and shaming those participants who fail to improve the environmental performance of their buildings while presenting PR opportunities to those who perform well.

Of the 2,789 organisations registered as CRC participants, 28 have registered under a Liverpool or Merseyside address.

So how did they fare?

Congratulations to National Museums Liverpool for coming joint first, and the only Merseyside representative in the top 100 (although the 22 top-ranked organisations also include global surveying firm CBRE, which has a Liverpool office).

Outside the top 100, creditable performances can be found from public sector organisations Liverpool City Council (109), Merseytravel (133) and Merseyside Police (244), with Liverpool John Moores University (258) and the University of Liverpool (381) not far behind. Leading the Merseyside- based private sector participants are Peel Airports (275), the Echo Arena and BT Convention Centre (381) and March UK (511), all inside the top 25%.

However, nine Merseyside participants came joint bottom of the league, while seven do not appear at all (presumably they failed to submit their annual report on time). So, despite a number of positive performances, overall for Merseyside it is a case of could do better.

But dont read too much into this first league table.

It is based entirely on early action joining a carbon management scheme êand êinstalling automatic meter reading devices rather than actual emissions levels.

It does, however, set the baseline against which participants will be judged on their performance in future years.

And, even though this first league table may not indicate who is actually the greenest, one might anticipate that organisations who have taken early action are perhaps also êthose most likely to take serious action to improve their environmental performance and reduce emissions going forward.