BEIS publish Verco-led Building Energy Efficiency Survey

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has published the Building Energy Efficiency Survey (BEES) 2014-15 which sets out to improve and update the evidence of how energy is used, and to provide an assessment of the abatement opportunities for all non-domestic premises across England and Wales.

Verco were commissioned in 2013 by DECC (now part of BEIS) to lead the project, working in partnership with GfK.

BEES collected data through a large sample of telephone surveys (3,690) across all sectors. A smaller sub-set of site surveys (214) across all sectors were also conducted to validate telephone survey responses and to inform modelling assumptions. The telephone surveys were used as the primary input into two models calculating the premises’ energy use and energy saving potential.

The key output for BEES is an overarching report, which explores energy use, abatement potential, barriers & facilitators to achieving that potential by sector and energy end use. It also looks at differences in premises occupied by public or private sector organisations, those occupied by SME or large organisations, and in premises that are rented or owned. Ten sector reports additionally provide more detail in relation to particular sectors and their specific energy use and abatement potential.

The evidence from BEES is already being used by policy teams within BEIS and is now the underlying source for energy use statistics in Energy Consumption in the UK.

The full results can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-energy-efficiency-survey-bees

We will be publishing further insights on this work soon.