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By Clare Naden on 15 March 2021

New standard enables organizations to share best practice for greater energy efficiency.

Implementing an energy management system (EnMS) can result in many benefits, such as cost and energy savings, and when established across multiple organizations, these benefits are even greater. A common EnMS enables the sharing of knowledge and resources as well as collaboration on energy-saving projects across organizations of all kinds and sizes. This includes SMEs too.

ISO 50009, Energy management systems – Guidance for implementing a common energy management system in multiple organizations, is aimed at uniting organizations that have some common element, such as energy supplier, sector or location, to optimize their energy use collectively, whatever their size.

An EnMS is a framework for energy management covering organizational policy, targets, action plans and ways of measuring progress. Extending it across multiple organizations allows for collaboration and common goals that will ultimately lead to greater savings and energy efficiency.

Shigeki Sakamoto, Convenor of the group of experts that developed the standard, said some examples of how this could work include collaboration between owners of commercial buildings and their tenants or energy suppliers and their customers.

“ISO 50009 is flexible enough to be used in virtually any situation where organizations want to share a common energy efficiency objective, including different branches of a large company or a collection of SMEs,” he said.

“The key is collaborating and sharing knowledge for greater energy efficiencies and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.”

ISO 50009 was developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 301, Energy management and energy savings, which is jointly managed by ANSI, ISO’s member for the USA, and SAC, ISO’s member for China. It can be purchased from your national ISO member or the ISO Store.

Source: iso.org