Phase 2 of the UK Government's Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) is underway

There was some uncertainty as to the future of the scheme. ESOS was one of the policy measures openly under consideration as part of the previous government’s 2015 energy efficiency tax landscape review, as well as being the UK implementation of the European Commission’s 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive.

Who does this affect:  UK
Full compliance by: 5 December 2019
 
In the aftermath of the recent UK general election the Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) have jointly advised organisations that they can now start carrying out energy audits as part of the compliance process.
 
Although there some exemptions for public bodies, the regulations require all other large UK organisations to take three important steps before the compliance date of 5 December 2019:

• measure their total energy consumption;

• conduct audits to identify cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities; and

• report compliance to their national scheme administrator - the Environment Agency in England, SEPA in Scotland, NIEA in Northern Ireland and NRW in Wales.

Alternatively organisations can comply automatically in certain cases. The main way to do this is by providing evidence that they have achieved certification to ISO 50001, the international standard for best practice energy management, across their organisation.
 
The one element of ESOS compliance that organisations are not yet able to begin is collecting the data for reporting their total energy consumption. The earliest this can begin is the start of 2018, as ESOS compliance requires a 12 month period of total energy consumption data which includes the qualification date of 31 December 2018.
 
Compliance details here.