ISO 500001 in Naberezhnye Chelny (05/16-12/17)

The Siberian city Naberezhnye Chelny has around 500,000 inhabitants, is dominated by industry and located in the center of the Russian oil- and gas fields. Although the region is rich in resources, in 2015 the city council has decided to implement an energy management system to improve energy performance. However, beside the accepted approach to focus on departments and organisations under direct control of the city, we took steps to actively involve and monitor the energy performance of industry and private households. Units under direct control of the city are administrative buildings, street lighting, hospitals and medical centers, schools, kindergarten, Universities, water supply, public transport. There are some departments where the city has an indirect control such as electricity supplier and social housing services. In a third step we also included private industries and households, which includes monitoring activities as well as initiatives to improve performance.

This pilot initiative was supported by UNIDO and we worked on site in Russia to develop and implement the ISO50001 standard as well as to conduct regular training sessions. Results are very promising and include clear energy savings in all related areas, increased awareness, changed budget rules, ongoing training and the roll out of this initiative to other Russian cities. Our work is also in line with future initiatives to develop an individual “ISO50001 by a group” standard.