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Raising Standards is a three-part series on energy efficiency standards for industry:
The U.S. industrial sector is responsible for 1/3 of the energy consumed in the U.S. annually, and accounts for 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The potential for efficiency improvement is significant, yet the savings opportunities are not being pursued for a variety of reasons, which are more institutional rather than technological.
But all that is changing. U.S. manufacturers will soon have several new and interesting voluntary standards to aid them in the pursuit of facility energy savings. These standards will be valuable tools to organizations looking to control energy costs, address carbon emissions, or demonstrate corporate social responsibility. This article is the last in a series of three profiling the new industry standards slated for release and use in the coming years.
Part Three: ISO Management System Standard for Energy
Is there an energy management system that is both applicable to any industry and effective in any country? Not quite yet, but one is in the works, and it's called the ISO Management System Standard for Energy (ISO 50001). The standard is being developed through a project committee consisting of 35 participating countries and five observing countries. The U.S. (through ANSI, the American National Standards Institute) and Brazil are Secretariats for the committee, which had its first meeting in September 2008, and is targeting late 2010 for a published standard.
ISO 50001 is intended to provide organizations and companies with a recognized framework for integrating energy efficiency into their management practices. This is accomplished by bringing the management of energy into the corporate organizational structure and culture of an organization, which is why ISO 50001 is being written to be compatible with current management system standards such as ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO 14001 (environmental management) – standards that are widely used throughout the world.
The standard will guide facilities (both industrial and commercial) in developing an energy management plan for:
- Developing a baseline of energy use,
- Actively managing energy use and costs,
- Reducing emissions,
- Ensuring continuous improvement of energy efficiency and energy intensity, and
- Documenting savings.
The U.S. has a large and active Technical Advisory Group (TAG) working with ANSI to ensure that the final product will be of true value to U.S.-based organizations. The existing Management System for Energy (ANSI/MSE 2000) discussed earlier in this series provides an excellent model for the ISO standard, and the U.S. would like to see most aspects of MSE 2000 carried forward into ISO 50001.
The ISO project committee has a challenging task, however, since several of the other participating countries (Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Thailand and Korea) also have existing national energy management standards, and the European Union has developed a regional energy management standard. In addition, similar standards are under development in China, Spain and Brazil. To facilitate progress, the U.S. created a comparison of the various national standards, and then worked with China’s Standardization Administration and the U.N. Industrial Development Organization to prepare a framework for action for use by the project committee. This document is helping to keep the development of ISO 50001 on track.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is supporting the development of ISO 50001 because it will compliment their efforts to reduce the energy intensity of industrial facilities across the U.S. DOE sees the energy management standard, in addition to the system assessment standards, as potentially important tools for facilities seeking to rein in energy costs. To that end, DOE is supporting the industry-led Superior Energy Performance program, which is pursuing a voluntary facility energy verification/certification effort. A key element of the Superior Energy Performance program will be conformance to ISO 50001.
Representatives from Alliance Associates Pacific Gas & Electric and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory serve as the chair and vice chair, respectively, of U.S. TAG. For additional information, please contact Vestal Tutterow (vestal.tutterow@ppc.com), who is active in U.S. TAG.
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