ENERGY LEGAL AUDIT

The Spanish Royal Decree 56/2016 of 12 February, that implements the Directive 2012/27/EU, regulates energy efficiency and energy audits. This audit is a tool that allows organizations that are required to carry out the audit to know their status regarding the use of energy as well as compared to the energy use with other companies.

The objectives of the energy audit are:

• Complying with the legal requirement for organizations bound by European regulations.

• Control more efficiently and reduce energy consumption, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other related environmental impacts as well as reducing energy costs through systematic management of energy.

• Detect operations within the processes that can contribute to savings and efficiency of primary energy consumed.

• Optimize energy demand of the facility.

• Use and diversification of energy sources.

The regulation sets out that, those organizations with more than 250 employees or a turnover of over 50 million Euros and at the same time a balance exceeding 43 million Euros, have to be audited every 4 years. The deadline for completion of the audit is nine months from 12 February 2016.

The Energy legal audit entails the following benefits:

• Manage more efficiently and reduce energy consumption.

• Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other related environmental impacts.

• Reducing energy costs through systematic management of energy.

• Being similar to data needed to assess the carbon footprint allows the organization to access the incentives included in the Royal Decree of measuring the carbon footprint and participate in the compensation schemes set up in this context.