Raising Standards: System Assessment Standards

Raising Standards is a three-part series on energy efficiency standards for industry:

• Part One: System Assessment Standards
• Part Two: ANSI/MSE 2000 – A Management System for Energy
• Part Three: ISO Management System Standard for Energy

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 first in a series of three profiling the new industry standards slated for release and use in the coming years.

Part One: System Assessment Standards

To aid industry in identifying opportunities for saving energy, industry and government have teamed up to develop a set of voluntary standards for the assessment of specific industrial energy-consuming systems. Known as Superior Energy Performance, the partnership includes U.S. industry; the U.S. DOE-Industrial Technologies Program Save Energy Now Initiative; the U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR® for Industry Program; the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Manufacturing Extension Partnership; American National Standards Institute; and Texas Industries of the Future.

The system assessment standards will help provide a framework that industrial organizations can use for conducting assessments of their primary energy-consuming systems. The idea is that this can be accomplished through the establishment of minimum requirements and guidance on organizing and conducting the assessment, collecting data, and reporting results.

Four standards have been developed and are currently being pilot-tested; the final standards will be accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the U.S. accreditor of voluntary consensus standards. These standards are set to be released for use in late 2009 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and relate to the energy assessment of compressed air systems, process heating systems, pumping systems, and steam systems.

By relying on specific areas for energy assessment these standards allow organizations to more easily identify and quantify targeted opportunities for economical energy efficiency improvements.

Next issue: The U.S. Energy Management Standard