The government should look into a way of incentivising businesses to encourage them to implement the recommendations of the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS).
That’s the view of Martyn Gilbert, Executive Energy Manager at BIU, who believes ESOS “still seems like an incomplete piece of legislation”.
Businesses were required to comply to ESOS by the end of January this year and have four years until the next compliance date, when they are expected to implement some of the energy-saving measures.
Mr Gilbert told ELN: “In my view, there needs to be some sort of tax concession or some additional imperative for businesses to try and help stimulate them to implement the recommendations that were coming out of the ESOS assessments.”
He believes there should also be a way of penalising firms that have not yet complied with the legislation: “It is not a level playing field as some businesses have taken a responsible approach and acted upon the legislation whilst others have not. If the end goal is to try and help the country reduce its carbon emissions, then there needs to be a way of encouraging businesses in doing that.”
On the UK leaving the EU, Mr Gilbert said he expected the most immediate impact to be that businesses will hold off investing and wait to see how things settle out.
However, he believes Brexit gives the UK “greater ability to control our own destiny”.
He added: “I think recent governments have shown an intention to focus on climate change to a degree, but I think the impact will be that we may take a view on the best way for the UK to approach that, keeping some legislation and modifying others.
“What I think is likely to happen is we will look for a more joined-up approach in how we focus on energy in relation to climate change. There’s been a lot of disparate EU legislation in the last 10 years but Brexit will allow us to have a more focused, UK-centric strategy rather than a more generic EU one.”
He urges businesses to look into whether ESOS is delivering the best benefits or whether getting the ISO50001 accreditation would be a better route for them.
Mr Gilbert said: “The reason I say that is because ISO50001 requires you to have the infrastructure in place to monitor and manage energy use and of course you’re required to report on its year-on-year rather than just once every four years as ESOS is at present.”
For further information on ESOS, ISO50001 and energy management please call 01253 789816 or email [email protected].
This is a promoted article.
