
Andrew Schein
Senior Advisor
The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), which is administered by the Environment Agency and was launched in 2014, requires large businesses/groups in the UK to carry out an energy audit of their buildings, industrial processes and transport at least once every 4 years to identify opportunities for energy efficiency.
A 2020 Post-Implementation Review (PIR) found that ESOS led many organisations to carry out energy audits or look at significant areas of energy use for the first time. However it also highlighted areas where the scheme could be strengthened. Most notably, organisations do not always act upon the energy savings opportunities that lead assessors identify.
Following the PIR, BEIS issued a consultation on strengthening ESOS. This included a proposal to provide a recommendations template to enable higher quality and more consistent presentation of recommendations to organisations, therefore encouraging their take-up.
BIT and the Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) together explored how behavioural insights could be used to develop the ESOS recommendations template.
First, we co-created a draft recommendations template with BEIS, incorporating their subject matter expertise and behavioural science principles.
Then we conducted qualitative interviews with a sample of ESOS lead assessors and representatives of organisations who meet ESOS criteria. The purpose of these interviews was to explore barriers and enablers for implementing recommendations, and obtain feedback on the draft template.
We then facilitated two workshops with the same representatives to further iterate the template design.
Throughout this process, we incorporated ideas and insights from participants and applied behavioural science principles to develop a final proposed recommendations template.
BEIS published a response to its consultation on strengthening ESOS on 28 July, in which it confirmed a decision to take forward the proposed recommendations template, and to work with stakeholders on developing accompanying guidance for the template.
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