Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has played a leading role in the development and publication of ISO 50001 – Energy Management Systems Standard. NRCan continue playing an important role as an international representative on ISO Technical Committee 242 (TC 242), which is responsible for ISO 50001 development and improvements.
All parties can benefit from the globally harmonized management system and evaluation criteria from ISO/TC 242’s deliverables because they: permit organizations to use an approach that has been reviewed and accepted by professionals from many different market sectors, they benefit multinational organizations to use a single, common system for evaluating and reporting energy performance everywhere, and allow other organizations to make international comparisons of program effectiveness.
The energy management standards also offer opportunities for integration with other ISO management system standards, taking into consideration the work of the Joint Technical Coordination Group on Management Systems, as appropriate. Such integration will further strengthen global harmonization of these systems.
ISO/TC 242 facilitates:
- Continual improvement in both the design and outcomes of energy management systems through its published documents, responding to an increasing body of data and experience that will result from large scale deployment and utilization of these documents and associated processes, and
- Refinement of its guidance documents on how to implement ISO 50001 for different sizes and types of organizations, again in response to increasing experience worldwide.
- Harmonization of governmental and private sector policy programs to support improved energy performance, by maintaining ISO 50001 and its other documents in ways that respond to ongoing comments and allow for continual improvement of these documents as well as the activities that they advise.
NRCan’s responsibilities will include participating in ISO drafting process, to produce revised standards or guidelines with input from international experts. This involves preparing working draft documents that must pass through a number of stages of comment and approval by international representatives on ISO committee TC 242 before finalization and ratification by ISO as an international standard. NRCan will require expert assistance from an organization that is familiar with the development of standards and the ISO process in order to fulfill its responsibilities. NRCan will also require expert assistance with respect to its duties within the ISO 50001 Canadian Standard Mirror Committee (SMC). The successful proponent is expected to maintain linkage between both committees (TC 242 and SMC) and inform the SMC about any ISO 50001 issues that might be of concern for Canada. The work will also include drafting up to two 20-40-page working documents, as requested by the SMC, in its work on promoting ISO 50001 adoption by Canadian industry.
