Waste Managers Join Government Energy Efficiency Scheme

21 December 2015 by Daryl Tunningley

Independent waste management company Cleansing Service Group (CSG) has successfully registered with the new Energy Savings Opportunities Scheme (ESOS) following a comprehensive energy audit across the company’s entire UK operations.

ESOS is the Government’s flagship energy efficiency scheme for business. The mandatory scheme, administered by the Environment Agency, requires around 10,000 qualifying companies to get up close and personal with their energy use and potential energy savings.

Businesses with more than 250 employees, £40million annual turnover or a balance sheet of more than £34million must complete an officially-approved energy efficiency audit every four years.

The deadline for claiming compliance was on December 5, but reports suggest that only around 4,000 companies – including Cleansing Service Group – had complied by then.

Fareham-based CSG carried out a 15-month review of its energy consumption across buildings, industrial processes and transport before identifying recommendations for cost-effective energy efficiency improvements.

Many of these are already in place, including the issuing of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to CSG drivers, and the replacement of fleet vehicles with those meeting the latest EU emissions directive.

And last year the company set up a monitoring programme to identity areas of potential energy saving throughout its 13-acre flagship waste processing facility at Cadishead near Manchester. It resulted in a £120,000 reduction in annual energy costs – equating to nearly 600 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

The Government says that ESOS audits can help businesses increase profitability by identifying cost-effective savings which, if implemented, can improve energy efficiency.

The scheme is estimated to lead to £1.6 billion net benefits to the UK, the majority of them being directly felt by businesses, as well as contributing to the country’s climate change mitigation programme.

CSG assistant group environmental manager Antony Gerken said:  “Ensuring that we met the deadline for this scheme and are now ESOS-compliant was a 15-month project for us, during which we evaluated our energy use across the whole company and then suggested areas where savings can be made.

“Some 90 per cent of our energy use is fuel, so it was a valuable exercise at a time when energy costs are a significant business expense and likely to remain so in the future.”