Comply with the UK Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme

If your business is affected by the ESOS regulations, accurate reporting is essential for compliance

What is ESOS?

All large UK organisations outside the public sector are affected by the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) regulations. Administered by the Environment Agency, and implementing Article 8 (4 to 6) of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EU), ESOS is a mandatory energy assessment scheme for organisations in the UK that meet the qualification criteria.

Organisations that meet the criteria for ESOS, must carry out assessments every 4 years, which audit energy used within the organisation including transport. This will identify cost-effective energy saving measures.

Who does ESOS affect?

ESOS applies to large UK undertakings and their corporate groups. The ESOS criteria for a large undertaking is:

• any UK company that 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 250 or more UK employees (paying income tax in the UK)

If your organisation is fully covered by ISO 50001, and you meet the ESOS criteria, you need to notify the Environment Agency that you’re compliant with ESOS, however you are not required to complete the assessment.

ESOS Phase 2 Requirements

ESOS phase 1 ended on 29th January 2016. Phase 2 requires organisations to take some important steps before the deadline of 5th December 2019:

1. Measure total energy consumption (including the energy consumed by buildings, industrial processes and transport)
2. Identify areas of significant consumption
3. Appoint a lead assessor and notify the Environment Agency
4. Keep records of your compliance

Keeping Records

Auditing energy consumption can be quite a large task, particularly when it comes to transport. The Environment Agency has given the following guidance:

When calculating your energy consumption from transport activities, you may make reasonable estimations based on verifiable data (e.g. expenditure) in cases where you do not have actual Reference: LIT 10094 Version: 6 Page 32 of 105 usage data (e.g. litres). For instance, you could use the number of expensed miles multiplied by an average fuel consumption factor to estimate the usage (See Appendix A, section A.9 for a worked example).

In order to collate accurate information for the Environment Agency, keeping accurate records of miles travelled is important. This is where MEO-Business can help. Using software to manage expenses allows your organisation access to detailed reports of mileage incurred across the business.

Monitoring expenses for mileage accurately, will not only assist with ESOS compliance, but also bring many other benefits to your organisations. Find out more about mileage and expense tracking.