Whitbread is the owner of some household name brands including Premier Inn, Costa Coffee and Beefeater restaurants. Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, ‘Good Together’, underpins all our business integrated thinking and aims to make us a force for good in the communities in which we operate.
Our job is to make sure that our businesses are as energy efficient as possible and to mitigate energy waste. We have invested over £20 million in research, development and adoption of energy saving technologies. Energy is the lifeblood of our hotels, restaurants and coffee shops, and with long term energy prices predicted to rise, it is essential for us to reduce our energy use through improved operational energy efficiency and new ways of working.
The Government’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) is a mandatory scheme for large UK businesses. Organisations must carry out audits of their energy consumption to identify cost-effective energy saving measures. ESOS is a great framework for Whitbread and other large businesses to identify energy inefficiency across all of their activities.
The ESOS framework will help Whitbread build a business case for further enhancing our energy management systems, reducing their energy demand and long term energy operating costs.
With sign-off from company directors necessary for compliance, ESOS is a great way of keeping the board informed and making sure energy efficiency is at the forefront of decision-making. Focusing attention on the energy efficiency opportunities identified by the ESOS assessment and engaging team members will complement our ‘Switch it off’ awareness campaigns and team training modules.
Our in-house approach to train members of our energy team to gain the ESOS lead assessor qualification has enabled us to maximise on in-year cost benefits gained from implementing the scheme early and will make sure we are best placed to comply with future ESOS requirements.
At Whitbread, we will have completed a full ESOS audit on a good proportion of our brands. Our energy assessment and key recommendations will form the basis of the compliance report, which we will submit to the Environment Agency before the deadline of 5 December 2015.
We see ESOS as an opportunity to make a real difference within our sector. It is not just a box ticking exercise; ESOS can be a great operational tool to pinpoint key areas of energy inefficiency and help measure and benchmark energy demands across different building types across our estate.
We look forward to identifying new opportunities and reviewing key recommendations from the ESOS assessment audit, and ultimately implementing innovative energy saving technology, supporting our commitment to being a responsible business.
If you would like more information, click here to read our latest CSR report.