ESOS & Data Centre - Update

As promised, an update on ESOS.

Our MD and principal consultant has now been awarded his ESOS lead assessor qualification, this required prior knowledge of energy auditing best practices (gained through ISO 50001 in his case), attendance on an ESOS lead assessor course, the completion of an assessment paper (apparently he achieved one of the highest scores) and a peer review (successfully completed)
We are now listed on the EMA ESOS register, which can be found here .

Data Centre World took place at London's Excel Arena last week and we took the opportunity to speak to many of the exhibitors and delegates about ESOS, many of them were unaware of the legislation (which is going to be huge problem, especially as the end date is the 5th December 2015) but those who were, were mystified by some of the quotes they had been getting from ESOS lead assessors to sign off or conduct and sign off the ESOS report.

They ranged from £375 (yes, that is correct!) to £75,000 for a 4 site Data Centre company, which included 3 data centre sites and 1 office complex with a data centre attached.
The variance is alarming, what exactly are you getting for your money?

Well, as a ISO 50001 auditor and an ESOS assessor company, we can tell you that there are 2 ways to comply with the legislation, the first is to do what the EU Commission is intending you to do and that is to conduct a thorough detailed energy audit of all your operations as required in the legislation, this can be fulfilled by your own internal audit team (as long as the quality of the data is in compliance!), or by the ESOS lead assessor, identify the potential energy savings and prioritise them to your companies internal financial standard and then seek sign off by a registered ESOS lead assessor (to check the methodology, data and savings costings and priority) and to advise on actual compliance with DECC.
The second way is to do a tick box exercise, use your electricity bills, hope that there are no energy savings opportunities, do the absolute minimum to be compliant and hope that you do not get audited.
There will always be energy saving opportunities!
Bearing in mind that once all the data has been compiled, the EU will expect that some energy saving WILL take place, if it does not, then the scope of the legislation may well change for the next reporting period to mandate that the top 4 energy saving opportunities identified in the ESOS report by the time of the next reporting period.
It is entirely possible that an organisation will manage to escape censure from ESOS (fines are applicable for non compliance, and continued non compliance until an ESOS report is produced) but with energy prices rising it may be wasted exercise.

We offer the following services:

ESOS Scoping, we will visit your premises and conduct a ESOS scoping audit, this will determine the extent of the required ESOS audit that you should undertake given your current status, this will include the quality of the data, the ability of your current team, and the future strategic view of your organisation.
This service is priced @ £1000 + VAT + UK expenses (we normally travel by train but for certain assignments we may need to travel the day before and hire cars etc, this will be passed on at cost)

Once we have completed our initial assessment we will provide you with a detailed breakdown including our costs of what you should do to complete your ESOS assessment.
This may include the installation of additional sub metering equipment, a further review of the energy data, your processes, and the verification or identification of energy saving opportunities, which may take additional time.

We only work in the Data Centre fields, but you can use our services in conjunction with your normal energy consulting service as they are EXTREMELY unlikely to have the depth of knowledge required to identify energy savings opportunities in the white space and M&E sides of your business and have operations knowledge and will make suggestions for energy saving that are, to be frank, dangerous and likely to cause problems in your IT and FM teams.

We are very well experienced in data centre auditing as we provide review services for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), undertake CEEDA assessments for DCPro, are ISO 50001 lead auditors and are conducting research into energy efficient best practice for data centres as a beneficiary of the EU funded DC EURECA programme.

If you would like to arrange an ESOS scoping visit please contact us on 01926 843 835 , email info@carbon3it.com, or follow us on twitter @carbon3it and direct message us.