If your company employs over 250 staff then you were required to be ISO 50001 compliant by December 2015 and the current deadline was 2021. It will enable your company to reduce your carbon footprint and as a result help you to reduce your energy costs.

ESOS compliance can be achieved through a number of options including undertaking an ESOS Energy Audit or gaining ISO 50001 certification.
Every enterprise will have differing requirements to maximise the benefits from ESOS compliance in terms of identifying and quantifying cost effective and practical opportunities to reduce energy consumption without incurring undue costs and demands on internal resources.

Enterprises should

• Identify the overall least net cost, and most beneficial route, to gain ESOS compliance
• Ensure that benefits from ESOS compliance are maximised
• Budget and plan for the programme of works to achieve ESOS compliance

If your enterprise has a well-developed management system ethos based on ‘plan–do-check-act’ (PDCA) you may gain more from training, developing, implementing and gaining certification to ISO 50001 as an alternative route to ESOS compliance.

ESOS has no requirement for enterprises to act on energy savings opportunities identified by the audit, but by not acting it means the exercise has been expensive and non-productive.

Whilst ISO 50001 allows a route for ESOS compliance it also provides a framework that an organisation can use to manage the findings and opportunities identified in terms of their energy management. As a result, organisation’ certified to ISO 50001 have an advantage of actively improving their energy management and reducing energy costs.