ESOS Checklist – How Best To Prepare for An Assessment

ESOS energy Checklist

The new ESOS scheme is underway and we have completed a number of ESOS assessments for businesses. Whilst there are several ways in which you can comply, including implementing ISO 50001, due to time limitations many organisations are requesting that a stand alone assessment is conducted of energy use in order to meet the compliance deadline of December 5th 2015. This form of assessment typically involves auditing energy uses over a 12 month period and including 90% of the total energy use in the assessment.

If you need an ESOS assessment and want to appoint a lead assessor to conduct the assessment there are several things that you can do to before the assessment to help the audit go smoothly and ensure that the data is available beforehand, saving the lead assessor time (and your cost) in digging around. The ESOS energy checklist below is not exhaustive but provides pointers from our current experience.

• Have a clear organisational structure and organogram in place detailing how your company and offices or buildings are related to the group structure
• Ensure that you are clear on what energy you actually use (i.e. pay for), you do not need to account for subcontractors fleet energy use for example if they pay the fuel bills.
• Decide with the lead assessor on the most appropriate 12 month reference period, you do not need to include buildings that were not owned or managed by the company on the qualification date of 31/12/14. The guidance actually states; “You only need to include energy consumption in relation to activities that you are carrying on and any assets that you held on the qualification date (31 December 2014) and still hold on the compliance date (5 December 2015). You may elect to exclude from the total energy consumption calculation energy consumed by any asset which is no longer held by you, or by any activity which is no longer carried on by you on the compliance date. Note that holding an asset doesn’t mean you have to own the asset (e.g. you may be borrowing, using, renting or leasing the asset)”. – ESOS Guidance
• Ensure that you can give the lead assessor access to your energy billing system or have a full set of energy bills already formatted in one place for him to review
• Make sure that others in the company know that you are undertaking an energy audit and ensure that they can provide access to buildings, plant rooms, vehicles as required.
• Decide who is going to notify the Environment Agency that an ESOS assessment has been completed – Appendix B of the guidance list over 50 questions to be completed. You the client may complete this or this may be done by the lead assessor
• Ensure that you have any previous EPC, CRC or other energy assessments that have been completed to hand. Produce an ESOS checklist to help
• Discuss the practicalities of improvement options with your ESOS lead assessor through the duration of the assessment so that real opportunities for improving energy efficiency that can be implemented by the organisation are identified early and costed for.

and finally ensure that you insist on regular updates throughout the assessment process so that any issues with regards to gaps in data or missing bills are identified and rectified early on in the process.

For a practical ESOS assessment quote please call us direct on 07790147084 or email paul@pauldowningltd.co.uk