Get Your Business ESOS Fit
Time is ticking for your business to comply with the Government’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS). Businesses which qualify for the scheme are obligated to carry out audits, identify efficiency savings and file reports with a lead assessor no later than December 5th 2015. There is a lot to do in less than a year.
What is ESOS?
Administered by the Environment Agency, ESOS is the UK government’s response to parts of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive. Effectively, the scheme serves to turn this EU directive into British law –making it mandatory rather than optional.
ESOS obligates qualifying organisations to assess their total energy consumption and pass the results on to the Environment Agency every four years, with the first year being 2015. Total energy consumption applies to all buildings, processes and transport used by the organisation. If your business does not have detailed breakdowns of all of this consumption then an audit will need to be carried out over a 12 month period.
The scheme is designed to help businesses identify areas where energy consumption could be reduced or made more efficient. Although organisations are under no obligation to actually carry out the efficiency-savings, we believe that many firms will identify some lucrative cost savings that will benefit both the environment and the company balance sheets.
Will my business qualify for ESOS?
The basic qualification for ESOS compliance is large organisations. This will mainly apply to businesses but will also include some not-for-profit and non-public-sector bodies.
ESOS qualifying organisations will either:
- Employ 250 or more people.
- Employ less than 250 people but have an annual turnover in excess of €50M, and an annual balance sheet total in excess of €43M.
Make sure you are ESOS compliant
There are some important considerations that ESOS qualifying organisations will need to make to make sure they reach the standard of compliance.
- Monitor your consumption at all levels of the organisation. This means at different sites as well as in transport activities and industrial processes.
- When trying to identify potential savings look for particularly high levels of consumption or for sites which are operating particularly efficiently and ask what they are doing differently.
- Make sure you appoint a lead assessor to approve your work. Although the bulk of the assessment can be carried out by a suitably qualified individual within the organisation, you will need an accredited lead assessor to approve your compliance.
While at times ESOS compliance may feel like an exercise in bureaucratic hoop-jumping, it is important to remembers that there is real scope for the this scheme to save businesses money on their consumption.
In the UK, the Government expects that ESOS could lead to about £1.6 billion in savings. The Carbon Trust meanwhile believes the savings could be as much as three times that amount.
If you would like further advice on complying with the ESOS regulations call a team member on: 0800 157 7175