The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has collaborated with the Energy Services and Technology Association (ESTA) to produce a new guide to help companies comply with the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS).
The guide, dubbed ‘Gaining Value from ESOS Audits’, has been aimed at businesses who qualify under ESOS’ remit and do not already have energy saving measures in place, and aims to instruct them how to both comply with the scheme and take advantage of potential efficiency measures.
BRE has claimed that while the scheme and its auditing process has been put into place to help companies save money, most regard it “purely as a cost or a time-consuming burden”. The paper has been produced to shed more light onto its benefits.
It outlines the basic principles of ESOS and offers guidance on the four main routes to complying with it whilst also touching onto other themes such as display energy certificates, ISO 5001 awards and non-domestic Green Deal assessments.
Andy Lewry, principal consultant at BRE’s Sustainable Energy Team and co-author of the paper, said: “The business and financial value that energy efficiency delivers is considerable. ESOS compliance should therefore not be seen as a tick-box exercise but rather a great opportunity to harness and optimise that return on investment.”
Robin Hale, director at the ESTA, meanwhile said that businesses should be looking to take “maximum advantage” of ESOS.
“Implementation will mean better control and management of energy consumption, which is when businesses can then see the real benefits – not only in terms of profitability but also environmentally and socially,” he added.
While much of ESOS has been enshrined in UK law, the actual fate of the ESOS scheme remains in question due to its grounding as a European Union-led piece of legislation. The result of the Brexit referendum has placed the UK’s adoption of EU laws into question, with little sign of clarity on the horizon.
Prime minister Theresa May is set to introduce the Great Repeal Act in the next Queen’s Speech, which will effectively remove the European Communities Act, the legislation that transposes EU law into the UK’s statue book.
According to REA chief executive Nina Skorupska, this would remove all of the current EU articles of legislation governing renewable energy and energy efficiency and while the government has said it would keep all current laws in place in the UK, Brexit secretary David Davis has caveated this by saying “EU law will be transposed into domestic law, wherever practical”.
The government has yet to confirm which laws are to be kept in place when the UK exits the EU in 2019.