At present, CCL charges account for around 5% of a company's energy bills each year. A typical annual saving with the scheme for a company using 4m kwh a year is £15,040 on electricity alone.

Steve Walker, BPIF Climate Change Levy manager, said: "In return for this levy reduction, companies commit to improvements in energy efficiency.

"Energy efficiency is measured by how many kwh of energy they use per square metre of paper printed upon."

Under the scheme, a company's energy efficiency is measured every two years and the last measuring year of the current scheme will be 2010.

Walker said: "The government is also keen to change the measuring currency from kwh per square metre to absolute energy use.

"This would mean companies would be penalised for growth as higher energy use would mean companies would fail to reach their targets."

The BPIF's scheme was launched earlier this month and by signing up to it, a printer would also be exempt from the government's Carbon Reduction Commitment that will start in 2010. 

This requires companies to purchase CO2 allowances from the government for each tonne of CO2 they emit.

It will affect individual companies or groups of companies that have half-hourly electricity meters and use more than 6m kwh of electricity per year.

Most of the industry will either be exempt because they are too small or because they already have a Climate Change Agreement.

However, there will be some companies who use more than 6m kwh across the group, but whose individual sites may not be on the CCL Scheme.

The minimum fee for joining the CCL reduction scheme is £1,000 for members of the BPIF and £1,250 for non members. The deadline to sign up is 1 November 2009.