Energy management

What does energy management mean?

Tense supply chains and geopolitical changes are focussing attention on energy costs and therefore energy consumption. Systematically improving a company's own energy performance and saving costs is what energy management is all about!
Material costs, personnel costs and energy costs are currently the most significant types of costs for many companies. In times of tight markets, it is important to keep an eye on these and ideally reduce them.
This is initially pure self-interest, which is supplemented by German and European legislation as part of the Green Deal.
All companies that no longer fulfil the definition of an SME (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are defined in EU Recommendation 2003/361. According to this, a company counts as an SME if it has no more than 249 employees and an annual turnover of no more than €50 million or a balance sheet total of no more than €43 million) must systematically address the issue of energy and resource consumption.

How can companies implement this?

Traditionally, this is done by implementing an energy-/ environmental management system or carrying out energy audits. The following main approaches have become established:
ISO 50001: Particularly for companies with a strong international focus, as it is recognised worldwide. Ideal for companies with existing ISO 9001 certification, as the structure is almost identical and therefore easy to integrate.

EC Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), as this is propagated by the legislative bodies as an alternative and also integrates sustainability aspects (see environmental management).
EN 16247-1: This standard describes the implementation of energy audits in organisations and is suitable for all companies that have no or only limited opportunities to sustainably improve their own energy consumption or where energy consumption does not play a decisive role. Indicators here are in particular Service companies, rented premises, legal requirements with no possibility of influencing them themselves.

What all standards and regulations have in common is that, as part of an energy assessment, the final energy sources are first defined and the total consumption is recorded on a site-specific basis. On this basis, optimisation potentials are defined, evaluated and implemented. This can take place as part of projects (resulting from an energy audit) or a management system (ISO 50001, EMAS).

Since October 2022, companies with a total energy consumption of more than 7,5 GWh must carry out a profitability analysis of the measures in accordance with DIN EN 17463:2021 (VALeri) in order to be legally compliant. This significantly restricts the entrepreneurial freedom to make investment decisions.

This is another reason why it is essential to create/adapt a legal and authorisation register that bundles legal and official requirements for the company, derives obligations to act and systematically implements them in the form of measures.

How do we support you?

We will be happy to advise you on the selection of the optimum basis for you and offer you the following services, among others:

• Introduction / implementation of EM systems
• Performance of internal and external system audits
• Performance of energy audits by qualified and approved energy auditors
• Performance of energy assessments
• Creation and maintenance of legal and approval registers
• Performance of legal compliance audits
• Documentation of EM systems
• Reorganisation & optimisation
• Support for certification audits
• Performance of process analyses
• Assumption of external representative functions
  · Support in using the VALeri
  · Support in the creation of a waste heat register

Your advantage: Expertise of our legal department

It is particularly worth mentioning that we have our own legal department with several lawyers to implement sensitive compliance issues in a qualified and professional manner.