ESOS government directive: Are you affected?

9th December 2014

Do you know about the ESOS energy assessment and energy saving identification scheme? The government directive, which sets out to save energy expenditure across all UK businesses, implements mandatory assessments for all large businesses. In fact, any businesses with any one of the following needs to comply with these new ESOS regulations – or face serious fines.

Businesses the new regulations apply to:

Those with over 250 employees OR
Those with a turnover exceeding £42m OR
Those a balance sheet exceeding £36.5m

If your business fits into any one of the above criteria, you need to take the ESOS assessment. The timeline is running tight too, as businesses need to have assessed whether they qualify for ESOS and whether they are required to undertake an assessment by 31 December 2014. Following this, you’ll need to notify the Environment Agency by the 5 December 2015 to let them know you have undertaken their ESOS assessment.

The Assessment

The ESOS Assessment has to be completed by 5 December 2015 and should be carried out by a Lead Energy Assessor. It needs to:

Measure your total energy consumption across buildings, industrial processes and transport
Identify the areas of significant energy consumption – accounting for at least 90% of your energy consumption
Identify cost-effective energy efficient alternatives for areas of significant energy consumption for example, solar power
Report compliance to the Environment Agency

The importance of being energy aware

While this process may not affect your company as of yet, it’s likely to affect one of the larger companies within your supply chain. The scheme only affects larger companies at the moment, but in the near future the Government may spread this initiative to all businesses – whatever the size. It’s important to be aware of this scheme and bear it in mind when making energy-efficiency related decisions over the next few years.