Input sought for draft standard on energy management

American National Standards Institute
Tags: energy management
A project committee established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has issued a new draft standard on energy management systems for review and comment.

ISO 50001, being developed by Project Committee (PC) 242, Energy management, will provide energy management systems guidelines for industrial plants, commercial facilities, and entire organizations. The document will be based on the common elements found in all of ISO’s management system standards, assuring a high level of compatibility with ISO 9001, Quality management systems, and ISO 14001, Environmental management systems.

Development of National Positions for ISO Standards

Within ISO, the first round of national consensus position and comment development is known as the Committee Draft (CD) stage of voting and commenting. During this stage, the national standards bodies of those countries registered as members of the activity will organize their national mirror committees to review the draft and to decide on the national position and any comments to be submitted to ISO.

The decision taken at the CD stage is whether there exists sufficient support for the draft standard to advance to the next stage of ISO’s processes, which is called the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage.

At the CD stage, the national mirror committee members review the standard and decide by consensus whether they feel the draft standard can advance, perhaps with minor comments. Conversely, the national mirror committee may decide that there are substantial concerns with the text that must be addressed and resolved before the document can advance to the next stage.

Upon reaching general consensus among the ISO project committee experts, a Committee Draft (see sidebar) was issued in late June for the first round of national consensus position and comment development. This is an important phase in the development of an International Standard during which each national standards body that is registered as a member of the ISO activity establishes its position concerning whether to proceed with development of the standard. Though practices differ slightly from country to country, most nations have a national mirror committee of subject matter experts that develop the national consensus position. In the United States, these committees are known as Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs).

As the U.S. member body of ISO, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has accredited the Georgia Tech Energy & Environmental Management Center (GT) as administrator of the U.S. TAG to ISO PC 242. In this capacity, GT staff provides administrative facilitation for all aspects of the TAG’s work.

TAG members and other interested U.S. parties are encouraged to obtain and review the draft standard and to develop their input for consideration by the full TAG.

To obtain a copy of the draft standard, contact Deann Desai (deann.desai@gatech.edu).

The U.S. TAG will meet in Kansas City, Missouri, on August 5-6, 2009, for the purpose of finalizing the U.S. position on the Committee Draft (CD) ballot. TAG members and other interested parties should submit comments to Deann Desai by July 16, 2009, in order to ensure that all feedback can be compiled for consideration at the meeting.

Following the close of CD voting, ISO PC 242 will meet in November 2009 in London to review the results of national body voting, consider comments received, and decide on the advancement of the draft standard to the ISO Draft International Standard (DIS) stage. If progress on the document’s development continues according to normal ISO timelines, it is expected that the final standard will be ready for publication by early 2011.

For further information, please contact either Jason Knopes of ANSI (jknopes@ansi.org) or Deann Desai of Georgia Tech (deann.desai@gatech.edu).

ISO PC 242, Energy management

Formed in spring 2008, this ISO project committee had its genesis in a joint ANSI-Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT) proposal, which was initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), for a field of technical activity on the subject of energy management systems standards.

ISO PC 242 has a four-country leadership structure, where the U.S. holds the chairmanship and China holds the vice-chairmanship. The U.S. and Brazil jointly hold the secretariat of the full PC, and the United Kingdom serves as secretary at the working group level. This unique leadership structure not only provides a geographic balance, but engages developed and developing economies in establishing a strategic direction for the committee.

For more information, view the previous ANSI Online news items: