Companies signed up to the Energy Savings Obligation Scheme (ESOS) stand to save an average of over £1 million per year according to the National Energy Foundation (NEF).
The final deadline for the energy assessment scheme passed on 29 January after thousands of companies supplied energy usage information to the scheme’s regulator, the Environment Agency (EA).
NEF worked with 11 firms during this process by carrying out energy audits on their businesses using half-hourly energy data, utility bills, finance records and mileage claims, and identified that energy savings totalling 29GWh per year could be made. This, NEF said, is equivalent to £12.5 million per year off fuel and utility bills across the companies it worked with, averaging over £1.1 million each.
While this would obviously vary depending on the size of the firm, NEF says its findings provide good evidence of the value of ESOS.
During its work with one particular firm, it found that £40,000 could be saved from re-engineering a heating system. According to Thomas Whiffen, senior energy specialist at NEF, the commercial site used an onsite combined heat and power plant.
“Although they were using the power, they were dumping the heat into the atmosphere, only to use lots of energy heating hot water for their industrial washing facility. On top of that, there was no space heating in their centre during winter,” he explained.
“The solution was to re-engineer the systems to produce space heating during the winter and deliver low-carbon pre-heating for the industrial washing facility. Together, these two solutions are set to save £40,000 and 1.7GWh per year.”
During the process of multiple site visits and examinations of plant rooms across the UK, NEF also identified that organisations were engaging very positively with the scheme. It also found that firms were improving their energy-use record keeping and improving awareness of how to reduce energy consumption among staff.
The organisations says it will be consulting with its clients in the coming months to work on new strategies for implementing the savings it identified.
Despite the savings possible through ESOS, thousands of firms have potentially missed the final deadline for falling in line with the mandatory scheme. The EA announced earlier this week that approximately 70% of organisations that qualify for the energy assessment scheme were in time, leaving an estimated 3,000 firms at risk of penalties.
