Energy Management System (EnMS) and Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are regarded to be easily combined as an integrated management system. When the International Standard for EnMS (ISO 50001) was introduced, many people wondered the necessity to have independent standard for EnMS. Yes, energy management has always been a part of ISO 14001, the international standard for EMS...however only if the person concerned wished to have energy management as one of the clauses in the requirements.

Energy management, for superior energy performance, for better energy efficiency and for reducing a significant cost related to energy indeed promotes positive aspect of environmental impact. Here is an interesting phenomenon. When there is a drive for compliance for requirements, people tend to make more effort in erasing negative impacts rather than enhancing positive impacts. So energy management part was not too much recognised as it should have been. For this reason, it is an inevitable outcome to have ISO 50001 the stand alone EnMS.

Independency does not mean to go its own way. As a matter of fact, it is contrary. EnMS covers a lot of requirement aspects defined in other management system. Therefore integration of management systems with EnMS is a good and effective solution as long as organisation keeps objective and target clear for each subject management system. However do not consider integration just for the reason of easy way out. To execute integrated management system, it requires clear strategy to make it work.

ISO 50001 Energy Management System is different from other management systems such as ISO 14001, ISO 9001, etc. because Energy Management System is to promote improving energy efficiency (promotion of positive aspects) whereas other management systems tend to control people of not doing wrong things or mistakes...preventing the negative aspects. Therefore when integrate ISO 50001 with other management systems a cautious measure has to been taken of losing the real purpose of the energy management. Furthermore the biggest and major differentiator is that energy management covers more on business and operational issues rather than technical issues. ISO 50001 will enhance people's motives for improvement and upgrade skill in the business operation on account of energy related operation. In this respect, if an organisation considers integration of management systems as uniform management system as shown below, it will not work.

OHSAS and Energy Management can be integrated from the following elements:

1. Much safety issues arisen from energy aspects (such as explosion, fire, burn, electrocution, etc.) and proper energy management will upgrade quality of procedure to prevent hazardous situation
2. Energy management encourages visibility of operation so that it increases awareness of workforce to review their daily business operation. This motivates the workforce to take accountability in his or her professionalism of which the top priority is their health and safety
3. Energy management encourages quantitative performance evaluation and verification which provide transparency for the workforce to see the level of performance including health and safety measures.

OHSAS and energy management integration can be expressed as below diagram.

Energy management should be integrated with business management.(This why ISO 50001 asks for top management involvement). OHSAS forms the fundamental of business sustainability; OHSAS can be position as the highest level of business management. With OHSAS-business-energy forming the core management system, it becomes visible and apparent that total management system is the most effective solution rather than just looking at integrating two or three management systems.