ISO 50001: Why It’s Important for Industry

On June 15, 2011, the International Standards Organization (ISO) officially issued the highly anticipated energy management standard, ISO 50001: 2011 Energy management systems – Requirements with guidance for use. Because of its importance to energy policy and to global energy efficiency, ISO 50001 was developed on an accelerated schedule under U.S. and Brazilian leadership, with 56 countries contributing to its development during a two and a half year period that concluded in May 2011.  

This new standard provides a consistent means through which a wide variety of end-users – industrial plants, commercial buildings, institutional facilities and other organizations – can evaluate energy use and develop sound strategies to improve their energy performance. The standard includes technical and managerial strategies that all levels of an organization can use to improve energy efficiency. By adopting these strategies, organizations that conform with ISO 50001 will elevate energy management into their corporate management practices just as they do with quality and safety.

According to Aimee McKane of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who serves on the U.S. Technical Advisory Group and represents the U.S. within ISO’s Technical Committee 242, "It's a groundbreaking international standard that's designed to have a long-term effect on how managers value energy efficiency in their organizations. By engaging top management, ISO 50001 should create new opportunities to save significant energy use worldwide."

What ISO 50001 Means for Industry

 ISO 50001 offers a flexible, yet consistent framework for industrial plants to manage energy. While conformance with the standard requires less documentation than ISO 14001, the new standard is still data-driven and contains specific action items. For industrial plant managers, implementing the standard will first involve developing a plant-level energy management policy and assembling an energy team with a leader who reports directly to management. Plants then conduct a review of their energy use and identify initial opportunities to improve energy performance. Plants will establish a baseline and energy performance indicators for tracking progress, set energy performance improvement targets, and implement action plans to achieve those targets.  The central elements of the standard include attention to energy performance in operations, procurement and design, as well as an internal audit process of the energy management system (EnMS) to measure progress against its energy efficiency goals.   

For companies that have already implemented ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental), implementing ISO 50001 will seem familiar, as it follows the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach that is fundamental to these two documents. Once the programmatic and human infrastructure is in place, much of the conformance will involve taking and recording actions to improve energy performance. Documentation requirements for ISO 50001 are flexible enough to allow each organization the freedom to more easily integrate the EnMS into their existing operations.

The Value of ISO 50001 for Industry

Conformance with the standard will yield energy and energy cost savings. However, there is additional market value from conforming to an internationally recognized ISO standard. Companies and plants that certify to ISO 50001 can announce their conformance with an internationally recognized standard in communicating their sustainability efforts to their customers, constituents, shareholders and the public. Energy efficiency achievements will be independently verified, adding to their transparency and credibility, and will further validate their successes. In the United States, ANSI’s National Accreditation Board (ANSI-ANAB) will provide certification of ISO 50001 conformance, and its companion plant certification program, Superior Energy Performance (SEP).

Learn More about ISO 50001 and SEP

In the United States, ISO 50001 is a foundational element of the Superior Energy Performance (SEP) program, a voluntary certification program for industrial facilities and commercial buildings. Currently, 26 U.S. industrial facilities are using ISO 50001 by participating in SEP, which is in its demonstration phase. In addition to implementing ISO 50001, the SEP demonstration plants must achieve a verified energy intensity improvement. ISO 50001 will engage these plants to develop respective baselines and craft strategies to help meet their energy intensity reduction goals.

Five facilities have already achieved SEP certification during the first round of plant demonstrations using the ANSI energy management standard, MSE 2000: 2008, and these plants will soon be recertified to ISO 50001. One of these five inaugural plants was the Dow Chemical Company’s Texas City, Texas, location. According to Joe Almaguer, Corporate Energy Manager for Dow, certifying to ANSI’s standard “further enhanced the Texas City’s existing management structure. It validated our current best practices and added some elements that made it more complete. Our Charleston, West Virginia, plant will become certified to ISO 50001 and we expect that this will also reinforce that location’s energy management system.”