Nearly three quarters (73%) of businesses that will be included in the first round of the Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) have not yet started their mandatory energy audits that will need to be in place by the deadline of 5 December.

According to a poll conducted by Energy Live News, 61% of businesses surveyed have not even yet appointed a lead assessor, with a minority of only 27% of businesses already ESOS compliant.

Under this initiative (you can find out more about it on the government website at bit.ly/esos-opportunity), organisations using a lot of energy need to measure their energy use for a full 12 months across their sites or risk fines of up to £50,000 plus extra charges of £500 per day (for up to 80 days).

The survey reports that 52% of organisations are citing lack of time and resources as the biggest barrier and 27% admit that identifying and collating data is the main challenge to complying with the scheme.

If enough companies fail to comply, this will presumably be another occasion where government legislation is put back a year (or more?) to give companies time to do so, as has happened previously, notably with the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme there was a lot of fuss about in 2011 – because the government does not really want to start imposing hefty fines on large numbers of companies. Although, of course, it could prove to be a risky strategy for businesses to assume that.

Darryl Mattocks, Managing Director of Enistic, energy management specialists, says: "We are working hard to help organisations meet their ESOS obligations with as little pain as possible. Our 'Easy ESOS' scheme is designed to take the pressure off. Starting with a free, no obligation scoping meeting, we can discuss the organisation's energy consumption, available data, building portfolio, any industrial processes and transport in order to produce a tailored approach, time frame and fixed price for compliance."

The problem of not having appointed lead assesors for the scheme is that there are fewer than 500 lead assessors available for the 10,000 or so businesses that fall within ESOS.

Darryl Mattocks says: "The pressure on the limited number of lead assessors available to work on ESOS means that organisations really shouldn't wait to act. The months from now until 5 December will fly by."

According to the government, these businesses could save £1.9billion on energy bills, citing calculations that investing £15,000 a year on energy efficiency measures as recommended by the assessment could lead to bill savings of more than £56,000 per year.

Darryl commented: "A monitoring and targeting campaign can identify significant energy savings for organisations averaging 28% but in some cases up to 45%. So the work in complying with the Regulations can bring opportunities to make some real cost savings."

Most stone companies will be too small to fall within the scope of ESOS, at least for now, but if your company is included – and it might well be if it pays half hourly rates – and you want some help, you can contact the Enistic team on 0844 875 1600 or email info@enistic.com. There are other companies also willing to help that you can use your search engine to find – just search for ESOS.