ESOS phase 2: participants should be ‘well underway’, says Environment Agency
The Environment Agency (EA) has urged organisations affected by Phase 2 of the ESOS regulation (Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme) to ‘take full advantage’ of the time available for auditing by starting now.
The ESOS compliance deadline is 5 December 2019, but firms can carry out energy audits with existing consumption data.
ESOS Phase 1 suffered from some bottlenecks in terms of capacity to help with the reporting, as some companies began work too late. In June of this year, the EA revealed that it had already issued more than 300 enforcement notices to non-compliant organisations. It has also recently published the list of fines imposed on 15 companies that failed to take remedial action.
In its latest newsletter, the scheme administrator said that Phase 2 work should be ‘well underway’ and reminded participants of what they can put in place now to help meet the Phase 2 deadline:
What you can do now
- Carry out ESOS energy audits for the supplies you intend to include in your Significant Energy Consumption. The audits need to have at least one year’s energy measurement, but this can be from any time between 6 December 2014 and 5 December 2019. The audit can use data that has been collected at any time during this period provided that the audit itself is carried out no later than 24 months after the data period and the data has not already been used for an audit in Phase 1. Different energy streams can be audited at different times so the workload can be spread better to suit your business needs.
What you cannot do yet
- Definitively determine your qualification status – this is based on your financial accounts for the financial year ending on the qualification date of 31 December 2018, unless your accounts are completed in the 12 months immediately preceding when you can determine if you qualify.
- Calculate your Total Energy Consumption (TEC) – this is based on your selected reference period which must include the qualification date of 31 December 2018 and end before the compliance date 5 December 2019.
- Definitively select your Areas of Significant Energy Consumption – you may have a good idea of what supplies you wish to capture in your energy audits, but at present, you will not know the exact percentage of your TEC that these cover.
Are enough UK firms acting on ESOS Phase 2 yet? The Hub asks the question.
