Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS)
What is it?
ESOS is a mandatory Energy reporting scheme regulated by BEIS . The Environment Agency's latest guidance (February 2021) for potential scheme participants can be found here. This link is especially useful for determining eligibility.
Important Note: ESOS is separate to the new streamlined energy and carbon reporting (SECR) framework which came into force on 1 April 2019
Will my organization be affected?
You must take part in ESOS if your organisation, or any UK undertakings in your organisations group, qualifies as a large undertaking on the qualification date.
Qualification date for phase 3 is 31 December 2022. A large undertaking is any UK undertaking that meets either one or both of the conditions below:
- it employs 250 or more people
- it has an annual turnover in excess of £44 million and an annual balance sheet total in excess of £38 million.
When is the next deadline?
The next submission deadline (phase 2 of ESOS) is 5 December 2023. This is the date by which an organization must notify that it has a certified ISO 50001 Energy Management System in place. This must be performed by an accredited certification body. If the organisation is not ISO 50001 certified they must collect data for reporting their total energy consumption via an ESOS audit.
Use your energy management system to comply and avoid ESOS audits
The good news is that BEIS has confirmed that companies with a certified ISO 50001 Energy Management system will have no further compliance requirements under ESOS. The route to compliance will be merely to inform the scheme administrator (The Environment Agency) that a valid certified ISO 50001 certificate is in place.
BEIS quotes on its website "If you have an ISO 50001 energy management system that's certified by an accredited certification body and covers all your energy use as defined under ESOS (for the whole corporate group in the UK), this counts as your ESOS assessment".
Lucideon has been providing ISO 50001 certification to many organizations since the standard was launched in 2011 and has services available for companies and organizations at all stages of their ISO 50001 journey and is UKAS-accredited to certify all levels of organization from corporates to complex industrial operations, for single sites to multi-site operations.
For many organizations, especially those with existing management systems (e.g. ISO 14001), the implementation and certification of an ISO 50001 system is comfortably achievable within 12 months. For those organizations that are unsure whether the ISO 50001 route is right for them, the best first step is a 'Gap Analysis' to assess the current status and evaluate the effort needed.
Read more about ISO 50001 and energy management on our Energy Management Systems (ISO 50001) page