Electrical Energy Management

The Energy Management Standard is Coming, is Your Organization Ready?
Whether in the United States or across the world, in industrial or commercial settings, energy must be managed. End users of energy often cannot control energy prices, political events or global economic shocks, but they can manage how they use energy. The ISO Energy Management Standard (ISO 50001) offers a promising mechanism to help end users proactively assess, measure and manage their energy consumption.
The ISO 50001 Energy Management System Standard has the potential to impact up to 60 percent of global energy demand based on broad applicability across multiple sectors. Once finalized in 2011, the ISO 50001 Standard will be able to help a wide variety of organizations in multiple sectors implement an energy management system for continuous improvement. By conforming to this standard, companies and other organizations will have a methodology that will enable them to manage energy use, address carbon emissions and demonstrate corporate social responsibility.

ISO 50001 Energy Management Standard
Today, energy management is a subjective concept with an array of programs across companies and institutions. The ISO 50001 Standard addresses this very issue. As an internationally recognized standard, ISO 50001 will provide a uniform framework under which an adopter may develop its own Energy Management Plan tailored to its personnel, facilities, operations and resources. ISO 50001 also will help companies and governments achieve continuous progress toward energy efficiency gains, quantifiable energy reduction and third-party verification of energy savings.

ISO 50001 currently is available as a Draft International Standard. The standard is being developed through a project committee consisting of 41 participating countries and 10 countries with observer status and is expected to be approved and published by the middle of 2011.

The ISO 50001 Standard will establish a framework for industrial plants and commercial facilities, as well as government and institutional organizations to manage energy use by integrating energy efficiency into their management practices. This is accomplished by requiring organizations to establish, implement, maintain and improve their energy management systems, enabling systematic achievement of continual improvement in energy performance, energy efficiency and energy conservation. To this end, the ISO 50001 Standard contains requirements on energy supply and consumption, including:

•Measurement
•Documentation and reporting
•Design and procurement practices for energy-using equipment and systems
•Processes and personnel
ISO 50001 applies to all factors that can be monitored and influenced by the organization to affect energy use. In addition, the ISO 50001 Standard is designed to be used independently and to be compatible with other ISO management systems such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, which are widely used worldwide.

Implementation of the ISO 50001 Standard could have several significant potential impacts. By managing energy more effectively, industrial plants and commercial and institutional buildings could achieve energy-savings of between 10 and 30 percent, and even more in some cases. Because of its widespread applicability, the ISO 50001 Standard could influence up to 60 percents of the world’s energy use across many economic sectors.
Adoption of ISO 50001 will be driven by companies seeking an internationally recognized response to:

•Corporate sustainability programs
•Energy cost-reduction initiatives
•Demand created along the manufacturing supply chain
•Future national cap and trade programs; carbon or energy taxes; increasing market value of “green manufacturing” and reduced carbon footprint
•International climate agreements
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supports the development of ISO 50001 because it will complement their efforts to reduce energy intensity in U.S. industrial facilities. The DOE views the ISO 50001 Standard as a foundational tool that any facility can use to manage energy consumption. To that end, DOE supports the industry-led Superior Energy Performance (SEP) program; a voluntary program that certifies industrial facilities for energy efficiency; a key condition of certification is conformance to ISO 50001.