ESOS Action Plan deadline extended

By Steven Pearson, Editor & Writer at Barbour EHS

In November 2023, the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme Regulations SI 2014/1643 (ESOS) were amended in order to, amongst other things, introduce a requirement that ESOS participants produced an ESOS Action Plan. This requirement applies to those who qualified for Phase 3 and the first submission has a deadline of 5 December 2024.

An ESOS Action Plan is a written record setting out:

• measures to improve energy efficiency that the participant proposes to implement before the end of the compliance period of an ESOS phase;
• whether the measure was recommended by an energy audit carried out under the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme Regulations SI 2014/1643;
• the date by which the measure will be implemented;
• an estimate (including details of the methods used to estimate) of the total energy savings expected to be achieved in a compliance period by implementing the measure;
• an estimate of the amount of energy savings expected to be achieved in relation to each organisational purpose.

If no energy efficiency measures are proposed to be implemented before the end of a compliance period, the ESOS Action Plan must instead state this fact.

Whilst the law states that the ESOS Action Plan must be submitted via the online Notification System (which is the MESOS system), the Environment Agency has confirmed that there has been a delay in providing the MESOS digital service and "the functionality to submit an Action Plan is not yet available".

It has therefore confirmed via ESOS Newsletter Issue 28 that although the legal deadline for submission is 5 December 2024, The Environment Agency, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) will accept Action Plans submitted by 5 March 2025.

In addition, more guidance and an example of the online system template should be published before 1 November 2024, by which point MESOS is expected to have the "required functionality" available.