Improvement opportunities for the energy management systems standard

Panel: 5. The role of energy management systems, education, outreach and training

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Kurt Seidel, Germany

Abstract

The compliance with an energy management systems standard like ISO 50001 alone is no guarantee that sustainable improvements of energy performance will be achieved. Also with regard to a substantial part and pre-requisite for a successful energy management system, which is the monitoring, measurement and analysis, there are very generic requirements defined in an energy management systems standard like ISO 50001.

The paper reviews selected voluntary schemes beyond the compliance with an energy management standard like ISO 50001, which require the achievement of concrete results in the improvement of the energy performance and / or switch to renewable energy supply.

Everywhere in the world small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are of overwhelming importance in their countries, especially for employment or income generation. the situation for SMEs with respect to the main constraints is more or less similar between countries, namely, they might lack technical and managerial capabilities. Therefore the implementation of an energy management systems standard like ISO 50001, which requires additional resources, might be difficult.

This paper reviews selected approaches designed for SMEs and makes an own proposal for a simplified approach for the stepwise establishing an energy management system in SMEs. These simplified energy management systems could enable SMEs to a structured continuous improvement process, a first step to a PDCA-cycle according to an energy management standard like ISO 50001.