Many organisations qualified for the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) during the first phase from 2011-2015. The ESOS scheme runs in 4 year phases, giving participating organisations the time to follow up the surveys and resulting recommendations from the previous phase in order to gain some value from them. In order for qualifying companies to keep momentum, companies should ideally consider the following timeline over phase 2 of the scheme

• From January 2016 – Follow up senior level interest to ensure that funds for carrying out at least some of the projects are budgeted into the next year.
• From April 2016 (or the beginning of the financial year) – Start work on carrying out energy reduction projects where agreed. Consider putting in a measurement and verification plan, in order to be able to verify the savings achieved to provide a business case for increasing the scope of projects for the next ESOS phase.
• From April 2017 – once the projects are in place and there is some energy consumption data showing improved performance at the relevant sites, consider which sites will benefit most from phase 2 ESOS surveys. Where there are new sites in the portfolio, or where there has been a significant change in operation at a site, then this is where the most new information can be gained by surveying. Sites where there have been no energy improvements carried out, and where there has been minimal change, will gain very little from being re-surveyed. You will not always be able to come up with a hard and fast list of sites that need to be audited until the end of the reference period (earliest is the 2018 calendar year), particularly if there is a high turnover of assets within the organisation. But from the previous year is will be possible to tell the likely required scope of the audit.
• From January 2019 – it is now possible to gather data for the reference period, to show that the audit work carried out so far covers 90% of the total energy use of the organisation. Where further audit work is required, schedule this in.
• From January 2019 – once all the audit work is complete, summarise the results and present to director level management. Use the verified savings from projects carried out as a result of the previous ESOS surveys in order to build a business case.
• Throughout 2019 – complete notification to the EA that the organisation is ESOS compliant, and complete the evidence pack.
• From January 2020 – the process begins again!

Of course, an alternate method is to direct efforts into gaining ISO50001 certification, which also ensures compliance with ESOS without the requirement for ay specific ESOS work. For phase 1 (by April 2016), there were only  around 250 organisations (4% of the total) that notified that they had complied with ESOS through ISO50001 certification, but the number is expected to rise during phase 2.

For more information on ESOS compliance and ISO50001 energy management systems, and how E2 can support you to achieve both, please see the Energy Services section of the website.

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