Donegal County Council has achieved ISO 50001accreditation for its Energy Management System.
The announcement was made by Cathaoirleach Cllr. Terence Slowey at the SECURE launch conference which was held in the Glenveagh Visitors Centre yesterday.
“This is the culmination of many months of work by the management and staff of Donegal County Council who have introduced a new Energy Management System throughout all it’s organisational operations and I am delighted to be in a position to announce today that Certification Europe has assessed the Councils Energy Management System and deems that it complies with the requirements of the ISO 50001:2011.”
ISO 50001 is an International Energy Management Standard (EMS) for energy use and consumption and provides a systematic approach for the organisation to achieve continuous improvement in terms of energy performance.
Donegal County Council is only the second local authority in Ireland to achieve this accreditation for all of the Council services
Speaking following the announcement Seamus Neely, Chief Executive with Donegal County Council said “Energy management is an all-encompassing process and includes every aspect of the organisation from finance, human resources and public relations to maintenance, purchasing and planning”.
“The Councils commitment to improving our energy performance is set out in our Energy Policy and our drive to achieve this accreditation has been led by the internal Energy Management Team headed by John McLaughlin Director of Roads and Transportation”.
Donegal County Council has put in place objectives and targets for energy performance improvement over the next number of years and has identified a number of Significant Energy Users or SEU’s within the organisation including Public Lighting, Offices and Cultural Services Buildings, Fire Stations, Landfill sites and the Transport Fleet.
“An important part of this process has been identifying opportunities for improving energy performance and we have conducted energy assessments on a number of buildings and are putting in place mechanisms to monitor consumption and this data will be analysed regularly and used to develop energy performance indicators,” says Seamus Neely.
“The staff energy awareness campaign which was launched in July is also an important part of this process. This campaign is about providing staff with information about energy, the importance of conserving it and advising on simple ways to save energy both at work and at home. Our staff have a very important role to play in improving our energy performance and I would like to thank all our staff for their continued support and commitment to the process”.
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