The issue of a recent consultation on the opportunities for the United Kingdom to meet the requirements of the European Union’s Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EU) will be of interest to all large companies with more than 250 employees and an annual turnover exceeding €50 million, will have to complete an assessment of their energy consumption every four years.
The assessment must be completed by an “approved assessor”, who will produce a list of “cost-effective efficiency measures” that the organisation can implement with a potential that if companies implement just 6% of the measures identified by the assessments they will save a cumulative £1.9 billion over 2015-2030 with greater uptake able to release savings as high as £3 billion.
DECC proposes that there would be a mandatory Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) to meet the requirements of the Directive. Under the ESOS companies will be required to report an energy intensity ratio (such as energy use per unit of production), which will be used to measure improvement. Energy data collected for other purposes, such as the carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency scheme and the EU emissions trading scheme, could be used to reduce the cost of complying with the scheme.
Three of the interesting consultation points are:
- The possibility of companies being able to exclude certain buildings or processes from audits provided that, when added together, these total no more than a small percentage of overall energy spend.
- Whether organisations, which have certified ISO 50001 or ISO 14001 management systems should be classed as ESOS compliant, and whether the scheme should be managed by the Environment Agency, the National Measurement Office or Trading Standards.
- The two potential options for how to approve ESOS assessors. One would see assessors certified to conduct ESOS assessments by UKAS-accredited certification bodies. The alternative option would require the scheme’s administrator to approve registers of assessors held by professional bodies, such as IEMA.
The overall timetable for the transposition of the requirements of the Energy Efficiency Directive into UK law is:
3 October 2013
Consultation closes
Spring 2014
Anticipated publication of UK Regulations
5 June 2014
Last date for the transposition into UK
December 2015
Completion of the initial energy assessments
A copy of the consultation document can be found at http://bit.ly/18irnc1