What makes a good ESOS action plan?
ESOS (Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme) is in place to realise central, long-term energy sustainability & energy reduction benefits for your business.
ESOS (Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme) is in place to realise central, long-term energy sustainability & energy reduction benefits for your business.
ESOS is a mandatory energy assessment scheme for UK organisations of a certain size, implemented every four years.
The assessments involve a complete audit of the total energy consumption across the organisation's buildings, industrial processes, and transport systems to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
All participants who qualified for ESOS in a given compliance period must produce an action plan and report against it subsequently.
The action plan and progress updates aim to increase participants’ accountability for taking action to reduce their energy use. Participants will be required to provide updates on any measures they intend to implement to save energy before the end of the compliance period, which follows the time they submit their notification of compliance.
The action plan covers four years following the compliance period (which coincides with the subsequent compliance period).
You should not delay in preparing your ESOS action plan. It pays to get it done now so that your organisation is ready for ESOS Phase 4 and so that you can apply the energy-saving measures that will benefit the business. Here’s how to put together a good-quality plan.
Your initial ESOS audit will identify many opportunities for your organisation to save energy. The official guidance says that the measures recommended should be “practical and cost-effective”. This doesn’t force you to implement every recommendation, but it does mean they are all worth consideration.
For the recommendations you’re choosing to reject, you will need to record your reasons. This is important for ESOS and to keep your EA records up to date. All this information should be included in your evidence pack.
Once your organisation has chosen the measures to implement in the current ESOS phase, you must work out when to carry them out. This is one of the biggest reasons why it is ideal to complete your plan now; delaying it closer to the March 2025 deadline builds into months of unnecessary delay.
Your ESOS audit should have suggested timescales for each of the recommended measures, considering issues such as equipment obsolescence, lease renewal dates, tenancy agreements, etc.
You do not have to accept the audit’s suggested timings, but the information should help you decide what to do and when. Then, your ESOS action plan should include the list of actions your organisation intends to take and the intended timescales. For each measure, state the month and year you intend to begin.
The ESOS rules require you to submit a progress update in the 12 months following the action plan deadline and then another one in the 12 months after that. All this information is made public, so it could affect your organisation’s credibility if you make an over-ambitious ESOS plan but then only achieve a small fraction of it.
If your planning is thorough and realistic, you should be able to chart a course of action that is achievable but still results in significant energy savings.
Your ESOS action plan must include an estimate of the energy savings you expect to achieve through each action over the course of the action plan period. For Phase 3, that means up to 5 December 2027. The information that you need to calculate this should be in your original audit report. If you took an alternative route to ESOS compliance, such as ISO 50001, you would need to find another way to calculate estimated savings. Give the source of the data you used in your calculations.
The rules also require:
Your ESOS audit doesn’t have to be the only source of recommendations for energy-saving measures. Your organisation may get advice from elsewhere, may be using an alternative route to ESOS compliance, or may decide to carry out actions not suggested in the audit. It’s fine to include measures not mentioned in your ESOS audit, but you need to state the source of the recommendation clearly. As with any other measure, you also need to include the month and year you intend to carry it out and the projected energy savings in Phase 3.
To assist companies with completing the action plan, there is an Excel template that should have been sent by the EA to your main contact and can be populated. When you have completed your action plan, you will require a board-level director to review and sign off the action plan. This ensures that all plans related to the recommended measures are communicated to the main decision-makers. From this point, the notification of compliance can be completed on MESOS – a guide for completing this submission should have been sent to your ESOS contact from the EA.
Compiling a credible ESOS action plan is challenging, but your initial audit will contain information and suggestions to inform your decision-making. Your action plan is effectively a strategy for saving your organisation significant sums of money and perhaps operating more effectively, too. So don’t rush these discussions; don’t be afraid to seek expert advice.
We’ve helped many businesses and organisations manage their audits and have a wealth of experience delivering a well-rounded and fully ESOS-compliant service. You can find out how we can help your organisation by booking a call with one of our ESOS experts on 01788 538150 or contact us here - https://proenviro.co.uk/contact/