Clean Energy Ministerial Awards recognise top global winners in energy efficiency and grid flexibility
PRESS RELEASE
Copenhagen, 24 May – This year’s Clean Energy Ministerial Awards recognized a number of winners in two categories – energy management and smart grids flexibility, with the number of competing participants reaching record highs and representing a diverse group of countries.
Winners received their top honours today at the Ninth Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in Copenhagen, with awards given out by Ministers and top officials, including Sweden’s Minister for Policy Coordination and Energy Ibrahim Baylan.
CEM Awards provide critical recognition and visibility for key issues and achievements in clean energy. They are a crucial way for the CEM to encourage clean energy innovation, catalyse markets towards highly effective and efficient clean energy solutions, and build and recognize clean energy leadership.
This year, the number of participating companies has exceeded all expectations and set new record in the number of competing businesses, looking to be recognised for their efforts, with over 100 competing participants in two categories.
The Energy Management Leadership Awards highlight the energy, environmental, and business benefits achieved when organizations of all sizes invest in energy efficiency. The current class of awardees represents several economic sectors that are new to the competition, reflecting the continuously expanding use of the ISO 50001 energy management system standard worldwide. Collectively, these 50 organizations report annual energy cost savings of up to US $383 million and emission reductions of up to 4.3 million metric tons of CO2—the equivalent of taking 916,000 passenger vehicles off the road.
“The work of the Energy Management Working Group is absolutely crucial. The Member governments and other partners leverage their resources and take collective action to strengthen national and international efforts to make energy management standards adoption easier around the globe,” said Christian Zinglersen, Head of the CEM Secretariat. “We are delighted to see so many companies participating in the Leadership Awards and by recognising their efforts, hopefully inspire others to follow in their steps.”
The Award of Excellence in Energy Management were formally awarded to An Garda Síochána (Ireland), PJSC Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (Russia), and PT. Pembangkitan Jawa-Bali Gresik (Indonesia), recognising the diverse geographical coverage of CEM Members and their efforts. The CEM Awards also recognised contributions of 47 other organizations with the Energy Management Insight Award for elevating global awareness of energy management systems and their ongoing benefits.
ISGAN launched its fourth Award of Excellence competition in ‘smart grids for flexibility’ with a theme of ’Excellence in Smart Grids for Flexibility’. The award recognises excellence in innovation, integration, and transformation of smart grid systems, especially displaying outstanding smart grid deployment/demonstration projects around the world that enables to balance supply and demand simultaneously and thereby reduce customer losses from power disruptions.
The top 2018 ISGAN Award of Excellence prize went to the “”Coordinating Power Control” by Sustainable Innovation (Sweden). Exemplifying the 2018 competition theme of “Excellence in Smart Grids for Flexibility”, Sustainable Innovation employs 500 connected water-based heating systems to provide more than 1 MW of flexible electricity power, 60 sites with rooftop PV, connected and measured to provide 200 kW of electricity production, 36 kW of electric vehicle charging, and 80 kWh of batteries with 60 kW of instant power flexibility, which helps create a cost-effective optimisation of a distribution grid north of Uppsala, Sweden. It was acknowledged by the Jury panel that this cooperative structure involving innovation hubs, the public, entrepreneurs, investors, and private companies, as well as Sustainable Energy’s approach in using smart grids to improve flexibility in the power systems, stands as best practice examples for the rest of the world.
ISGAN also recognized 6 other projects for ‘Finalists’, including “Smart Grid Deployment Project” by KEPCO (Korea), “Smart Operator – Efficient control and monitoring of the low voltage grid” by Innogy SE (Germany), ” SysDL 2.0 – Ancillary services from large-area distribution grids ” by DREWAG NETZ GmbH (Germany), “Local Energy System with Customer Flexibility” by EON Energidistribution AB (Sweden), “OpenADR4Chile” by ENEL (Italy) and “Instability Detector of the Gaspésie Regional Power System: DIR-Gaspésie (CGART-ALGORES)” by Hydro-Quebec Research Institute (IREQ) (Canada).