Firms need a ‘realistic and relevant’ ESOS assessor now!

Businesses need to be practical and realistic about hitting the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) deadline and appoint an assessor who will provide opportunities for energy efficiency to your organisation. […]

Businesses need to be practical and realistic about hitting the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) deadline and appoint an assessor who will provide opportunities for energy efficiency to your organisation.

That’s the view of Sam Davidson, Head of Consulting Services at Utilitywise, who is warning firms they will have to find an assessor soon regardless of whether they can hit the 5th of December deadline or not.

Citing the Environment Agency – the scheme administrator –  he said only just over 100 businesses have complied so far out of 14,000 organisations.

ESOS is a mandatory energy assessment scheme for organisations in the UK. If they don’t assess their energy use, they may have to pay a penalty of up to £90,000.

Mr Davidson told ELN: “We’re looking at less than 70 days until the 5th of December deadline. I keep saying to our partners it’s much better to do something properly and right than rush and do something which doesn’t provide the energy efficiency opportunities which are really going to make a difference and can give you good payback on your compliance costs.”

He added although it’s going to be a challenge for businesses to meet the deadline, he believes the Environment Agency will look “quite kindly” on those businesses that are showing interest and who are doing their energy audits even if they don’t manage to comply fully.

He said it would be those organisations who don’t show any interest that will be penalised with fines.

Giving his top three tips to businesses, Mr Davidson added: “Appoint somebody right now as a lead assessor and get your data together. Make sure you’ve got all your energy usage data including fleet data and have that readily available.

“Thirdly, just be realistic and practical about the marginal gain between rushing through meeting the deadline and actually getting something really useful at the end of it.”

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