To determine strategic issues that may affect your organization’s ability to improve its energy performance and achieve the intended outcomes of the EnMS, information about the organization’s strategic objectives and challenges are needed. This information may have already been identified as part of the organization’s strategic or long-term planning process. Having management input into the determination of the relevant issues is desirable, not only to expedite the process but also to show management that the EnMS considers strategic issues facing the organization. However, it is not unusual for management to not be involved in this process and for the energy team to develop this information on its own. In this case the information should be presented to top management for their review and input. This approach presumes that the energy team has access to the relevant information about the organization’s strategic direction, goals, and challenges.

Examples of strategic external issues may include:

• Economic and financial conditions
• Competitive circumstances
• Legal and regulatory requirements
• Technological developments
• Political, social, and cultural conditions
• Environmental conditions
• Restrictions on energy supply
• Effects of climate change

Examples of strategic internal issues may include:

• Core business objectives and strategies
• Governance and organizational structure
• Information flows and decision-making processes
• Organizational culture and knowledge
• Organizational policies
• Financial resources
• Technological maturity
• Sustainability goals

In performing this task, keep in mind that the relevant issues are those that may affect your organization’s ability to achieve the intended outcomes of your EnMS and energy performance improvement.

The Playbook worksheet is for your optional use. As with most of the optional Playbook worksheets in the Navigator, you can adopt this resource for your EnMS or simply use it to generate ideas on how you may want to capture the information generated by this task.

Have any new external or internal issues arisen that could impact the EnMS or energy performance?  For example, any new vacancies in key positions or changes in top management priorities.

Are there any impacts to the EnMS resulting from disruptive events such as COVID-19 (e.g., Centers for Disease Control requirements for ventilation?)

Be sure to record any issues. Think about what impacts your ability to successfully implement your EnMS.

Who or what create risks? Who or what creates opportunities?

If you do not have an existing 50001 Ready-based EnMS and want to build one that also helps your organization manage energy-related GHG emissions, in this task you should follow the guidance in the “Full Description” tab keeping the following in mind:

1. Determine the issues that may affect the EnMS.  Ensure the external and internal issues you determine include those that affect your organization’s energy performance as well as your organization’s energy-related GHG emissions performance.  Review your organization’s strategic or long-term planning documents, including strategic direction, goals, and challenges, and include any GHG emissions issues that are relevant to energy-related GHG emissions and the EnMS.
2. Record this information.  Make sure you keep a record that includes strategic issues relative to both energy performance and energy-related GHG emissions performance.

If you have an existing 50001 Ready-based EnMS and want to adapt it to manage GHG emissions, you should:

1. Review your existing strategic internal and external issues.   Identify any additional internal or external issues that are relevant to your energy-related GHG emissions and include them in your documented list as needed. Consider how any broader GHG emissions issues can affect energy-related GHG emissions and the EnMS.
2. Record this information. Make sure you document any changes you made to the list.

The guidance for this task is from the following sections from the ERP Framework: ERP Framework Milestone 1.

By developing an Emissions Reduction Plan using the 50001 Ready Navigator framework, organizations can better align their energy management efforts with their GHG emissions reduction targets and the requirements of ISO 50001 and the 50001 Ready Navigator. The Emissions Reduction Plan can help organizations identify and prioritize energy-saving opportunities and establish specific, measurable targets for GHG emissions reductions. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Plan can serve as a roadmap for integrating decarbonization principles throughout all organizational practices, reducing the risk of making decisions that lock in carbon emissions for the foreseeable future. The following is the guidance taken out of the ERP Framework Milestone 1 that can help completing this Task.

Stakeholders should identify internal and external strategic opportunities and risks that may impact or improve the organization’s ability to develop and achieve the intended outcomes of the ERP and work with stakeholders to implement actions to address these risks. (Milestone 1)

A GHG Emissions Reduction Plan translates targets into action and ensures staff at all levels of the organization have access to the resources needed to achieve deep GHG reductions within the desired time frame. There are many benefits to developing and documenting an Emissions Reduction Plan that outlines how an organization is going to achieve its GHG emissions reduction targets. The Emissions Reduction Plan is the necessary step to define how to meet the targets across the portfolio. Emissions Reduction Plan benefits include the following:

• Offering stakeholders (e.g., executive leadership, employees, building occupants) confidence that the organization has identified and secured the resources (financial and personnel) needed to turn their ambitious targets into action.
• Preparing an organization to meet regulatory and reporting requirements and avoid potential financial penalties from state, local, or other GHG policies and programs.
• Supporting analysis of multiple scenarios to identify the preferred strategies to pursue.
• Aligning decarbonization ambitions with the operational actions needed to achieve them (i.e., capital planning processes, maintenance/replacement decisions).
• Reducing the chance of decisions resulting in assets that lock in carbon emissions for the foreseeable future by integrating decarbonization principles throughout all organizational practices.
• Supporting organizations in staying on track to achieve long-term emissions reductions even if there is staff turnover, since the emissions reduction plans have been defined and documented.

This task establishes the foundational context for the entire energy management system within an organization. It aligns with the initial steps of the ERP framework, where the organization assesses the current GHG emissions profile.

The ERP framework helps organizations determine how strategic issues can impact energy performance and the goals of their energy management system (EnMS). By addressing emissions reductions using the 50001 Ready Navigator framework, organizations can better align their energy management efforts with their GHG emission reduction targets and the requirements of ISO 50001 and the 50001 Ready Navigator.

The guidance for Task 1 is found within the following section of the ERP Industrial Framework:

Milestone 1:

At this stage, corporate leadership should also determine, if applicable, any guidelines for achieving the goal, such as enacting a requirement to achieve the target without the use of GHG emissions offsets, or setting a maximum marginal cost of abated emissions for emissions reduction projects. However, organizations must be cognizant of these constraints, as they may preclude certain emissions reduction pathways. For example, if emissions reduction projects have a maximum simple payback period, this could prevent organizations from pursuing high-impact, long-payback projects that will help them meet their target.

Since you are implementing water management using the same framework as your Energy Management System (EnMS), keep in mind that your water and energy management goals will likely be tied together. In some facilities significant water users could also be significant energy users, or the other way around, a relationship most commonly referred to as the water–energy nexus.

The first step in integrating water into the management system is to identify the issues that may affect your ability to achieve the intended outcomes of the management system, including water use reduction. The Energy Act of 2020 amended 42 U.S.C. § 8253(f)(4), Implementation of Identified Energy and Water Efficiency Measures. This is an example of why regulation changes are a high-impact external strategic issue for federal facilities when considering both water and energy. In addition to the Energy Act of 2020, other strategic issues that might affect your water management planning process could include:

• Water availability and drought
• Environmental regulations
• The rising cost of water
• Resource conservation efforts

Consider issues, local governments, organizations, people, stakeholders, commands, funding agencies, etc., that could be a risk or provide an opportunity toward your ability to improve your energy performance and be successful with the implementation of your EnMS.

Consider any goals and objectives previously identified.  Include these, as appropriate, and any additional goals and objectives the energy team identifies.

Here is a list of examples that may apply:

• Staffing resources
• Site mission, goals, and objectives
• Guest satisfaction and reviews impacting energy management
• Project funding approval lead time
• State and local government requirements and priorities
• Local utility company programs or lack thereof
• Changing ventilation requirements and customer expectations as a result of COVID-19
• Climate concerns, extreme weather (hurricanes, tornados, drought, etc.)
• Electric grid resilience

The Task 1 Hotels Playbook shows several of the above examples.

Note: Task 7, Risks to EnMS Success, is directly connected with Task 1.  The risks and opportunities identified and listed in Task 1 will be revisited in Task 7, where you will define the level of each risk or opportunity and identify actions to address the risks and opportunities.  The “Outputs for Task 7” columns of the Risks and Opportunity Register table in the Task 1 Playbook should be left blank for now and then filled in when completing Task 7.

ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 contain the same requirements to determine the external and internal issues that may affect an organization’s ability to achieve the intended outcomes of its management systems. There are, however, some minor differences that go beyond those of ISO 50001. ISO 9001 explicitly requires that the issues are monitored and reviewed. ISO 14001 requires that the issues include environmental conditions affected by or capable of being affected by the organization.

Despite these minor differences, the requirements for understanding the organization’s strategic goals and objectives and determining the relevant issues have the same intent across these standards. Because the external and internal issues are relevant to the strategic situation and direction of the organization, there should be some consistency in the types of issues identified if your organization has implemented some or all three of these management systems. Of course, there can be differences in exactly how the issues affect the ability of quality management, environmental management, and energy management to achieve their intended outcomes or results. A single approach to determining the issues could be used for each management system standard.

The ENERGY STAR^® Guidelines for Energy Management does not explicitly address the organization’s strategic goals and objectives, its strategic external and internal issues, and how they affect the ability of the management system to achieve its intended outcomes. Step 3.1 does discuss that a combination of short-term and long-term energy goals can be effective. It points out that long-term goals can be affected by internal rates of return, internal planning horizons and guidelines, organizational strategic plans, and commitment to voluntary environmental initiatives. Step 3.2, discusses the methods used by leading energy programs. These include linking to organization-wide strategic goals in addition to operational goals. This is consistent with ISO 50001 requirements to align the EnMS with the strategic direction of the organization.