Government established ESOS to implement Article 8 (4 to 6) of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EU). The ESOS Regulations 2014 give effect to the same scheme. ESOS is a mandatory energy assessment scheme for organisations in the UK that meet the qualification criteria. The Environment Agency is the UK scheme administrator.
Organisations that qualify for ESOS must carry out ESOS assessments every 4 years. These assessments are audits of the energy used by their buildings, industrial processes and transport to identify cost-effective energy saving measures. The deadline for the second compliance period (ESOS phase 2) is 5 December 2019.
Your organisations qualifies for the second compliance period if, on 31 December 2018, it met the ESOS definition of a large undertaking. Any UK company that either:
Employs 250 or more people, or
Has an annual turnover in excess of 50 million euro (£44,845,000), and an annual balance sheet total in excess of 43 million euro (£38,566,700).
An overseas company with a UK registered establishment which has over 250 or more UK employees (paying income tax in the UK)
1. Calculate your total energy consumption
This is the energy used by assets held or activities carried out by your organisation or group. This includes the energy consumed by buildings, industrial processes and transport. It must be based on 12 months’ verifiable data.
The data must:
Be for a continuous period
Begin no earlier than 6 December 2014 for the second compliance period (and no more than 12 months before the start of future compliance periods)
Begin no more than 24 months before the start of the energy audit
Not have been used as the basis for an energy audit in a previous compliance period
2. Identify your areas of significant energy consumption
This is the energy used by assets held, or activities carried out, by your organisation that account for at least 90% of your total energy consumption. You then need to:
Find out whether ISO 50001, DECs or GDAs cover any of your areas of significant energy consumption.
Identify whether ESOS compliant energy audits have been, or need to be, carried out for the areas of significant energy consumption not covered by ISO 50001, DECs or GDAs.
As long as 90% of your total energy consumption is covered, you can use a mix of approaches with some of your energy consumption covered by ISO 50001 - some by DECs or GDAs and some by ESOS energy audits.
And then:
Identify energy saving opportunities
Energy saving opportunities should be reasonably practicable and cost effective to implement. Recommendations should include the estimated costs and benefits of implementation.
You should assess cost effectiveness by comparing the reduction in units of energy or energy spend with the cost of implementing the measure.
Calculating the cost of implementing a measure should be based on an analysis of whether the investment will be economical over its entire life. This would include taking into account the cost of purchase, installation, maintenance and depreciation.
There is no regulatory requirement for participants to implement the energy saving opportunities identified. This is for each organisation to determine themselves.
3. Appoint a lead assessor
You need to appoint a lead assessor to carry out and oversee or review your energy audits and overall ESOS assessment. Lead assessors can be employees or external contractors as long as they are members of an approved professional body register.
Organisations are expected to carry out site visits as part of their ESOS audits. It is not necessary to visit every site. Regardless of the number of site visits, organisations need to ensure they have collected and analysed data for all their areas of significant energy consumption.