ISO 50001:2011 Energy Management System
The ISO 50001 energy management standard is a proven framework for industrial facilities, commercial facilities, or entire organizations to manage energy—including all aspects of energy procurement and use. An energy management system establishes the structure and discipline to implement technical and management strategies that significantly cut energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions—and sustain those savings over time.
According to the definition stipulated in ISO 50001 standard, energy can be in various forms, such as electricity, fuels, steam, heat, compressed air and renewable, which can be purchased, stored, treated, used in equipment or in a process, or recovered. The main purpose of adopting an Energy Management System (EnMS) is to enable an organization to improve its energy performance, which generally includes energy use, energy efficiency and energy consumption, in a systematic approach.
The ISO 50001 energy management system (EnMS) standard helps organizations establish systems and processes necessary to improve energy performance. It can apply to any size or type of organization. The purpose of this new international standard is to:
The standard is based on the common elements found in many ISO management systems standards, which assures compatibility and easier integration with ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental) management systems and other equivalent standards.
Benefits of Adopting Energy Management System
By offering a systematic methodology for any sizes of organization, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), to establish own energy management system, ISO 50001 can provide organizations with a number of business benefits.
These include: