BSI BRITISH STANDARDS LEADS NEW INTERNATIONAL PROJECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY MANAGEMENT

Phil Black - PII Editor 28/10/2008

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BSI British Standards, along with the national standards bodies of the United States of America (ANSI), Brazil (ABNT) and China (SAC), will head up the development of an international standard on energy management, ISO 50001.
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, which was attended by delegates from 25 countries, 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 UK has made a significant contribution to the development of standards within the energy sector in recent years, and is leading standardization activity in a number of pioneering new areas. BSI proposed and leads a new International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) technical committee on Wave and tidal energy and will soon publish PAS 2050, Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services.

As well as a new national committee on energy management and energy efficiency, which includes leading experts in the field, BSI manages a number of national committees working on the subject of renewable energy, such as solid biofuels and wind turbines, and is very active in the European arena for energy standards.

This wide experience puts BSI in a good position to take the joint lead on the new ISO project with ANSI, ABNT and SAC. 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.

Mike Low, Director of BSI British Standards, said, “BSI is proud to be working jointly with these three other national standards bodies on such an important project. Energy management should be on every boardroom agenda and our aim is to use the vast experience we have of delivering environmental solutions to develop a standard which leads the way forward in this field.”

The committee aims to have ISO 50001 ready for publication by the end of 2010.
For more information contact BSI British Standards
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