In recent decades the enterprises have turned their attention to cost savings. Energy, that started to comprise major cost in business, has become a key aspect. Since energy has always been a resource, necessary for manufacturing, it has become to be deemed as one of the main cost sources, requiring serious attention. Developing concept of energy management understands energy management as any other manufacturing resource management with the purpose of reducing the enterprises’ costs through energy efficiency improvement.
Acknowledgement of the importance of energy as one of the kinds of resources, requiring the same management as any other expensive resource, and not as the enterprise’s overhead costs, is the major first step towards energy efficiency improvement and energy costs savings.
This is how a wide range of standards was developed in different countries, each of them reflecting national characteristics, generalizing experience and practice of many industrial and nonindustrial organizations. The very first one of them is British standard BS 8207:1985, Code of practice for energy efficiency in buildings, published in 1985, still current with some alterations, introduced in 1994. American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have developed the standards ANSI/MSE 2000:2005 Management System for Energy and ANSI/IEEE 739:1995 Recommended Practice for Energy Management in Industrial and Commercial Facilities. Danish standard DS 2403:2001 was the first standard, providing organizations with proper energy management implementation guide.
European standard EN 16001:2009 was published in 2009 and by now has been granted national status in 17 European countries. In 2008 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has began the development of new international standard ISO 50001 (Energy management systems – Requirements with guidance for use). For this purpose a new ISO/TC 242 technical committee “Energy management” was developed.
ISO 50001 implementation is possible for all organizations, regardless of their size and line of activity; it can be implemented in the organization both separately and with other management systems, such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, etc. The standard is based on general elements, used in all ISO management system standards, which provides for high level of integration with other management systems.
The objective of the standard is to provide companies with structured and universal guidance on optimization of the process of energy resources consumption and system management of this process.
ISO 50001 is developed to set for organizations a generally recognized scheme of energy-saving integration into their management practices. Organizations all over the world, including Russian ones, have obtained an access to common agreed standard to implement it into all the scopes of activities based on consistent and sustainable methodology for determination and implementation of improvements. The standard is designed to meet the following objectives:

• Help organizations more fully utilize their current energy consuming assets;


• Create transparency and promote communication regarding energy resources management;


• Promote energy management best practices and consolidate applicable energy management practices;


• Sustain assessment potential and prioritizing implementation of new energy-efficient technologies;


• Provide improvement scheme for energy conservation throughout the supply chain;


• Promote energy management improvement in support of projects on reduction in greenhouse gas emission;


• Enable integration with other organizational management systems, such as environmental management, occupational health and safety.

An enterprise, that organized and arranged the work of high quality energy management system, obtains an opportunity to:

• improve manufacturing cycle;


• timely implement efficient energy-saving actions;


• receive output from these actions in the form of financial profit;


• improve its energy efficiency;


• implement plans on the improvement of energy-saving efficiency through analysis of current energy consumption against expected one;


• implement and apply in the organization’s daily activity different legislative, regulatory, contractual and other requirements and obligations


• fulfill and important regulating function in climate change.