Every large business owner, energy expert, procurement officer, facilities and utilities manager knows about ESOS, right? It’s the UK Government’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme that, through compliance, could help firms reduce their energy consumption.
Well, if you don’t know about it or, you don’t know enough, you really aren’t alone. A team at Verismic, working with well respected survey firm Vanson Bourne, carried out research towards the end of 2014 into awareness of ESOS – only a few months after the legislation came into force with much fanfare – and the results were less than encouraging.
Awareness of ESOS is just 33% in firms employing over 3000 people. Firms employing 1000-3000 fair marginally better, but awareness still remains low at only 42%. Awareness was as low as 24% in large firms operating in the retail, distribution and transport sector. Even the sector with greatest awareness of ESOS, the financial services industry, one of the most heavily regulated and compliance-orientated sectors in industry, reaches only 40%.
In all cases, this is worryingly low considering the qualifying level for compliance with ESOS is 250+ employees. The survey of 100 businesses employing over 1000 UK employees shows an extraordinary number of UK firms are at risk of a £50,000 fine, and/or a £500 fine for each day the business remains non-compliant and being publicly named and shamed for non-compliance.
Get clued up
96% of firms with no awareness of ESOS believe that, considering both the December 2015 deadline and financial penalties involved, the UK Government should do more to increase awareness of ESOS. Desire to see the Government act was highest amongst firms in the retail, distribution and transport sectors, with 100% of respondents suggesting the Government needs to do more to raise awareness of the scheme. But, it was equally high in financial services firms (93% say the Government should do more) and manufacturing businesses (94% want Government to do more).
Sadly, I don’t think the Government will give any leeway to you for their lack of action and promotional activities, so you’ll need to get ‘clued-up’ yourself. Fortunately, I don’t think it takes any stretch of the imagination to work out where a significant amount of energy usage comes from – buildings, transport, lighting, along with the massive fleet of PCs, laptops and IT hardware within most big organisations.
However, uncovering pockets of energy waste, and reporting against them correctly, requires appointing or re-allocating personnel familiar with the scheme. The only other option is to outsource, adding to the challenges for some companies to comply by the deadline, but there is already a fairly large market of consultants that go into businesses and advise on how they can reduce energy costs.
IT banana skin?
You’ll also need to be wary of IT too – it could easily become the proverbial banana skin. Despite the contribution of IT energy to firms’ overall energy consumption, and the necessity of firms to report against energy consumption in order to comply with ESOS, our research showed, surprising, that only 19% of firms knew the energy in kWh that IT consumes in their organisation. Awareness of IT energy consumption was lowest in firms employing more than 3000+ people (14%) and retail, distribution and transport firms (8%).
Plus, when speaking with energy consultants we know that many don’t currently have the ability to provide in-depth reports on IT energy consumption that meet the ESOS reporting criteria.
It is only one piece of the ESOS puzzle, but an important piece; tracking and reporting against IT energy consumption, particularly from PCs, can and should be included in ESOS audits. The impact of PCs specifically, on the energy bill of large firms, is actually considerable and should not be underestimated. For example, a UK Government report, Greening Government: ICT Annual Report, released in late 2013, suggests that right now its own end user IT devices from just fifteen departments are using 145,402, 517 kWh of energy annually, which costs the Government over £17m per year!
There are tools that already exist to manage PC fleets such as Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager, but most aren’t going to be able to provide the accuracy and reporting that the ESOS regulation requires. Dedicated, PC power management software will be essential if ESOS auditing is to be accurate.
Don’t panic
You have 11-months until the deadline for compliance with ESOS – but the clock is ticking down. That’s plenty of time to understand ESOS, identify internal resources or recruit consultants, purchase the necessary IT energy management software and services, complete the audit and submit the reports required. It sounds a lot, but it can be done. But whatever you do, don’t let your lack of awareness and knowledge cost you thousands of pounds in fines.
