Global Energy Management Awards Program Now Accepting Entries
Top winners to be honored at ninth Clean Energy Ministerial in 2018
The Energy Management Leadership Awards is now accepting entries for 2018. Any organization with an ISO 50001-certified energy management system is invited to participate in this prestigious awards program from the Clean Energy Ministerial’s (CEM’s) Energy Management Working Group (EMWG). A Ministerial-level forum working to accelerate the global clean energy transition, the CEM holds annual awards to showcase leadership and achievements that support organizational, national, and global climate goals.
“Improving energy performance is vital as we transition to a low-carbon future,” said Christian Zinglersen, Head of the CEM Secretariat. “This initiative, which recognizes innovative approaches to energy management under ISO 50001 certification and encourages sharing of best practices, is a great example of the work of the Clean Energy Ministerial.”
Industrial, commercial, and public sector organizations or facilities are eligible to enter if they hold a current ISO 50001 certificate from an accredited third-party certification body. To enter the competition, each organization must submit a structured case study describing its energy management experience and the resulting benefits. The submissions will be evaluated by an independent panel of international experts.
Top entries will receive the prestigious CEM 2018 Award of Excellence for Energy Management. These winning organizations will be recognized next year during the ninth Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM9) meeting, which will be held in the cities of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmö, Sweden, and attended by energy ministers and corporate leaders from around the globe.
Beyond the Award of Excellence, each organization that submits a qualifying entry will receive an Energy Management Insight Award for contributing to global knowledge-sharing on the benefits of energy management systems. Top-ranked submissions from each country will also be communicated to the appropriate country governments, which may present national energy management awards of their own. To date, Argentina, Canada, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates are offering national awards to recognize their countries’ national leaders, and other countries will be added the website when confirmed.
The submission deadline is 24 January 2018. Interested parties are encouraged to visit the CEM Energy Management Leadership Awards website, www.cleanenergyministerial.org/EMawards, to learn more about the award rules, entry format, scoring, and recognition. Register to attend an informational webinar on Thursday, 2 November 2017, at 8:00 AM EDT Washington, DC, USA (UTC-4 hours). The webinar, hosted by the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, will feature Andrew Cooper, Energy Specialist for New Gold’s New Afton Mine in Canada, a 2016 CEM Award of Excellence in Energy Management winner. Mr. Cooper will share his experiences and tips on preparing entries.
“Implementation of energy management systems in industry achieves significant annual energy savings in the range of 3 to 15%. This is demonstrated in a number of cases studies and examples in over fifteen countries where UNIDO supports energy management systems implementation,” said Tareq Emtairah, Director of Energy Department at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the operating agent of the EMWG. “Recognizing leadership through the awards triggers scaling up energy management in other industries.”
All accepted entries will be published online to highlight the range of benefits achieved through the use of ISO 50001-certified energy management systems. Award-winning entries from previous years are featured on the CEM website in the EWMG’s case study library, where case studies can be filtered by industry, country, award received, and keyword search.
Energy management systems certified to the global ISO 50001 standard are producing real benefits, with early evidence suggesting that companies “can achieve energy and financial savings of over 10%, alongside benefits such as management of other production inputs,” according to the International Energy Agency’s Energy Efficiency 2017 report. CEM analysis shows that implementation of ISO 50001 across service and industrial sectors globally could drive cumulative energy savings of approximately 62 exajoules by 2030, saving over $600 billion in energy costs and avoiding 6,500 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. The projected annual emissions savings are equivalent to removing 215 million passenger vehicles from the road.
This awards program is one of several high-impact activities organized by the EMWG, a joint initiative of the CEM and the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC). Through the EMWG, government officials worldwide share best practices and leverage their collective knowledge and experience to accelerate the effective use of energy management systems. The following governments participate in the EMWG: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, the European Commission, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) serves as the Operating Agent for the EMWG. The EMWG leads the CEM Energy Management Campaign, a call to action urging governments, business, industry, and other key partners to use the ISO 50001 standard as a transparent mechanism to demonstrate progress towards climate and energy goals. The Campaign aims to achieve 50,001 global certifications to ISO 50001 by 2020.
The CEM is a unique platform, combining a high-level ministerial meeting with year-round technical work focused on improving policy and regulatory frameworks in energy supply, demand, systems, and integration, as well as a number of cross-cutting areas.