Case study·Public Sector·Ireland

Ireland's first local authority to reach ISO 50001

Cork County Council manages a demanding energy portfolio — three swimming pools, a 17-floor County Hall, laboratories and area offices. By adding sub-metering and Advisor analytics, monitoring became automated and centralised to the energy team, and the Council became the first local authority in Ireland to achieve ISO 50001 certification.

Sector

Local government

Where

County Cork, Ireland

Engagement

Sub-metering + Advisor analytics

The win

First Irish local authority to ISO 50001

At a glance

The Council's energy portfolio consists of several Significant Energy Users (SEUs) consuming large amounts of energy each year — including three directly managed swimming pools and a large County Hall building with 17 floors, laboratories and area offices. Through a competitive process, the energy team engaged ResourceKraft to help them onto the road to ISO 50001 certification.

CustomerCork County Council
SegmentPublic sector / local government
EstateMultiple SEUs — pools, County Hall, labs, offices
ApproachSEU sub-metering + Advisor analytics
StandardISO 50001 (first Irish local authority)
SelectionWon through competitive process

One of Cork County Council's directly-managed public swimming pools, part of the estate covered under this energy monitoring programme. — One of the Council’s three directly-managed swimming pools — among the Significant Energy Users brought under Advisor monitoring on the road to ISO 50001.

01The brief

A wide portfolio, measured manually

Achieving ISO 50001 certification takes real work, and one of its key pillars is the measurement of energy use. Across a wide portfolio of Significant Energy Users, building managers were recording energy data by hand — time-consuming, inconsistent, and hard to turn into a coherent picture.

The energy team needed a centralised measurement system to analyse usage and identify opportunities as efficiently as possible, so they could build credible energy performance indicators and report against them across every SEU.

02What we did

Automated, centralised measurement

Sub-metering across the SEU buildings, combined with Advisor analytics, took energy monitoring out of spreadsheets and gave it back to the energy management team as a single, automated system.

Sub-metering across SEUs. Meters across the Significant Energy User buildings feed Advisor, so monitoring is automated and centralised rather than recorded by hand.
Performance indicators from baseline data. Baseline data let the energy team develop meaningful energy performance indicators — and report any non-conformance back to SEUs.
Heat-mapper and cost-mapper tools. Different views of the same data made it easy to investigate areas for improvement and plan the following year's savings opportunities.
Stakeholder buy-in. Ease of use brought building managers and users on board — they could instantly see the effect of changes they made.

One of the key pillars of ISO 50001 is the measurement of your energy use. Having a centralised system such as Advisor to analyse and identify opportunities as efficiently as possible certainly helped Cork County Council achieve ISO 50001 certification.
Senior Executive Engineer, Cork County Council

03The outcome

Certification, and a repeatable saving cycle

Building managers no longer had to record energy data manually, saving significant time and effort. Automated reporting let the team track energy performance indicators and report back on any non-conformance, while the heat-mapper and cost-mapper tools made it straightforward to find and plan savings year on year.

The result: Cork County Council became the first local authority in Ireland to achieve ISO 50001 certification — and gained a system it can keep using to manage a wide SEU portfolio, identify opportunities and make ongoing energy savings.

1st

Irish local authority to reach ISO 50001

Manual → automated

centralised energy measurement

Year on year

planned saving opportunities

Now able to: manage a wide portfolio of SEUs · achieve & maintain ISO 50001 · identify and plan savings · make ongoing energy savings.

Get in touch

On the road to ISO 50001?

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