The national standards bodies of the USA (ANSI), Britain (BSI), Brazil (ABNT) and China (SAC) will head up the development of an international standard on energy management, ISO 50001. The collaboration will ensure that the perspectives of different geographic locations are represented and will also enable SAC and ABNT to benefit from the experience of more established standard bodies – BSI and ANSI. BSI in particular is active in the field and has proposed, and leads, a new International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) technical committee on Wave and tidal energy. It will soon publish PAS 2050, Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services.
The future standard will establish a framework for all types of organisations (industrial, commercial, institutional, large residential, and transportation sectors) as well as emerging economies and SMEs to manage their energy usage. It is estimated that the standard could target as much as 60% of the world’s energy use across national economic sectors.
The first meeting of the international committee, in Atlanta, attended by delegates from 25 countries, is reported to have made excellent progress in establishing a working draft document. In order to ensure compatibility with the existing suite of ISO management system standards, the draft document is based on common elements found in all of these. PAS 99 Specification of common management system requirements as a framework for integration is used as the basic framework document for the first working draft of ISO 50001, with the addition of ‘Energy’ specific elements.
The committee aims to have ISO 50001 ready for publication by the end of 2010.
