NORMAPME

Energy

CEN CLC/JTF 189 - Energy Management: General requirements and qualification procedures

In November 2006 NORMAPME joined the newly established CEN Sector Forum Energy Management, which co-ordinates standardisation activities in the field of energy.

The sector forum is divided into working groups to look into the following matters:

Standardisation needs for green and white certificates;
Energy benchmarking of industry and service sectors;
Standards on air conditioning in commercial buildings, thus depending on analysis of standards developed by CEN/TC 156,

The forum also monitors the work of two CEN/ CENELEC JTF:

TF 189: "Energy management and related services - general requirements and qualification procedures" and
TF 190: "Standard on ex-ante and ex-post calculations of life times of energy savings"

TF 189 is divided into two WGs:

1) WG on "Energy management systems with guidance for use" followed by NORMAPME representative Olivier Loebel (GCI-UICP).

2) WG on "Energy service companies - requirements and qualification procedures" followed by Mr Udo Wirges. This WG took up its activities in February 2007 and is developing definitions and qualification requirements for ESCOs, standardised energy service contracts and, perhaps, a standard on investment grade energy audits. Despite the low attendance at the meetings the chairman insisted that the group had the obligation to present a draft standard. An official Commission’s mandate should follow to support this activity. NORMAPME and GCI-UICP supported the following points:

The development of a certification procedure and evaluation methods for ESCOs was removed from the scope of the standard.

The definition of ESCOs as stated in the directive on Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services was reinserted with minor modifications. No decision was taken as for the GCI-UICP’s proposal to include renewable energies in the scope of energy services. The “purchase of energy” was removed from the definition of end-users.
The complex list of information ESCO should provide on its organizational structure was put into the annex as a non-binding recommendation.
The requirement for ESCO to state in their constitutive act that energy service provision is part of their business was skipped.
The recommendation that ESCOs should be certified according to ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 was skipped.

The document will be redrafted. At present it offers little added value to the energy services market, although the position of independent ESCOs, and in particular SMEs concerns should be better translated. After a long but successful fight the scope of the ESCO group was redefined: The group will no longer develop a standard on ESCOs but on energy services (definitions, contractual requirements etc.).