ISO OKs Energy Management Project Committee
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has just approved the creation of a new project committee (PC) that will develop an international standard on energy management.
The new standard will provide all types of organizations and companies with a practical and widely recognized approach to increase energy efficiency, reduce costs, and improve their environmental performance.
Following the successful examples of the ISO 9000 series on quality management and the ISO 14000 series on environmental management, PC 242, energy management, will consider the development of a standard that contains relevant terms and definitions and provides management system requirements together with technical guidance for use, implementation, and metrics.
The secretariat of PC 242 will be held jointly by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), the national member bodies for the United States and Brazil, respectively.
The standard is intended to be pertinent to a number of different industries, including utility, manufacturing, commercial building, general commerce, and transportation. With such broad applicability, estimates indicate that the guidance developed by PC 242 could influence has much as 60 percent of the world's energy demand.
PC 242 intends to develop a standard that will:
• provide organizations and companies (utilities, manufacturers, commerce, buildings, transportation, both private and public) with a well-recognized framework for integrating energy efficiency into their management practices
• offer organizations with operations in more than one country a single, harmonized standard for implementation across the organization
• provide a logical and consistent methodology for identifying and implementing improvements that may contribute to a continual increase in energy efficiency across facilities
• assist organizations to better use existing energy consuming assets, thus reducing costs and/or expanding capacity
• offer guidance on benchmarking, measuring, documenting, and reporting energy intensity improvements and their projected impact on reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
• create transparency and promote energy management best practices, thus reinforcing the value of good energy management behaviors
• assist facilities in evaluating and prioritizing the implementation of new energy-efficient technologies
• provide a framework for organizations to encourage suppliers to better manage their energy, thus promoting energy efficiency throughout the supply chain, and
• facilitate the use of energy management as a component of GHG emission reduction projects.
"The urgency to reduce GHG emissions, the reality of higher prices from reduced availability of fossil fuels, and the need to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources provide a strong rationale for developing this new standard building on the most advanced best practices and existing national or regional standards," said Alan Bryden, ISO secretary-general.
For more information about PC 242 or the new energy management standard, contact Jason Knopes, ANSI program manager, ISO outreach and enhanced services (646.460.7897; jknopes@ansi.org).