ISO 50001 Certification

Certification under international standard ISO 50001:2011 (energy management system, EnMS) is permitted as a compliance route under ESOS as an alternative to undertaking ESOS Audits.

ISO 50001:2011 provides a framework of requirements12 for organisations to:

• develop a policy for more efficient use of energy;
• fix targets and objectives to meet the policy;
• use data to better understand and make decisions about energy use;
• measure the results;
• review how well the policy works; and
• continually improve energy management.

A certified ISO 50001 energy management system can be applied across all of the assets and activities of an organisation/group or applied to a specific asset/activity (e.g. utilised to manage a high energy using asset/activity).

To be valid as a route to compliance under ESOS, your ISO 50001:2011 energy management system must be certified by a United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accredited certification body, by a body accredited by another EU member states’ national accreditation body, or by a body which is a member of the International Accreditation Forum.

If you maintain a compliant but not certified system, you may wish consider seeking certification to permit the use of your energy management system as a route to compliance under ESOS. Where an ISO 50001 certified system covers all of your organisation or group, at the time the certification was undertaken, this shall constitute compliance with ESOS provided the certification is still valid at the compliance date (5th December 2015 for the first ESOS phase). In this circumstance, there is no requirement for an organisation or group holding such a certification to have its ESOS compliance verified by a Lead Assessor.