ESOS at last!

After waiting many, long months, the Energy Act has gone through parliament and it includes the changes to the ESOS legislation. And now, the government has issued the final requirements for conducting an ESOS Assessment. Hooray – we can restart our ESOS projects and make some progress.

 

New deadline

First thing to note is that the deadline for ESOS Phase 3 has been pushed back six months to the 5th of June 2024.

The reporting period for data, however, has not changed – it still requires 12 months of data, covering 31^st December 2022.

The website to make the notification of compliance should be open by the end of January.

 

More detail and data needed

ESOS still requires energy in buildings, travel and processes to be considered, including electricity, gas, other fuels, company vehicles and grey fleet.

The Significant Energy Consumption (SEC) must now cover 95% of total energy, up from 90%.

Other new items include:

• Further information on the corporate group, including SIC codes and organisational structure charts.
• Names of assessors, directors and contributors to the project.
• Comparing energy to metrics, so giving energy intensity ratios for buildings, transport and processes (e.g. kWh electricity per m2 of floor area; kWh of diesel in company trucks per tonne-mile of product delivered).
• Explanation of and data relating to energy saving project conducted since ESOS phase 2.
• Consideration should be made as to next steps for the energy saving recommendations made.

Indeed, ESOS Action Plans should now be produced – these must be submitted by 5^th December 2024, with updates submitted annually in 2025 and 2026.

ESOS reports should be shared with subsidiaries and other companies within the corporate group.

 

Changes to ESOS Phase 4

While ESOS has traditionally covered energy, in the next phase (2024-2027) will have more of an emphasis on carbon emissions and Net Zero. This may also need to consider climate change adaptation and resilience.

With many organisations already calculating their carbon footprint, including this in ESOS also gives great opportunities for reducing emissions and having a positive impact on the environment.

 

It’s great to finally be able to make some good progress on ESOS projects – it’s going to be a busy five months!