South Africa now has the capacity to support industry to become energy efficient at the highest possible standard. This after the graduation of the first South African professionals qualified to lead an audit team to certify a company as ISO 50001 compliant last week. The 31 graduates have completed training by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the National Cleaner Production Centre of South Africa  (NCPC-SA) through the Industrial Energy Efficiency Project (IEE Project). The certificates were handed out at an event held as part of the South African Auditor and Training Certification Authority (SAATCA) conference in Pretoria last week. The auditors will now await applications for certification by local companies working towards greater energy efficiency. 

ISO 50001  was adopted by the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) as SANS/ISO 50001 in 2011 as the national standard for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system. Whilst no South African companies have yet achieved it, the IEE Project is supporting a number of local companies in working towards joining the approximately 1800 companies worldwide who have attained ISO 50001 certification at around 3 000 sites, most of which are in Europe.
Following the adoption of the SANS/ISO 50001 standard, the IEE Project and SAATCA developed and convened two SANS/ISO 50001 lead auditor and training provider courses in 2012 and 2013 respectively. These courses have produced South Africa’s first lead auditors qualified to conduct SANS/ISO 50001 enterprise audits and provide training of auditors. 

The EnMS and ESO experts trained under the IEE Project will also prove critical to the SANS/ISO 50001 certification process. Unlike many other ISO standards, the ISO 50001 standard requires considerable technical input on the different energy systems in a plant, and as such the audit requires a team made up of various energy experts, headed by a qualified ISO 50001 lead auditor. The implementation of interventions in line with ISO 50001 reduces the kilowatt hours consumed by a plant, thus reducing costs and the level of CO2 emissions.