Eco-Management and Audit Scheme

The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a voluntary environmental management instrument, which was developed in 1993 by the European Commission. It enables organizations to assess, manage and continuously improve their environmental performance. The scheme is globally applicable and open to all types of private and public organizations. In order to register with EMAS, organisations must meet the requirements of the EU EMAS-Regulation. Currently, more than 4,600 organisations and more than 7,900 sites are EMAS registered.

The EU EMAS Regulation entails 52 Articles and 8 Annexes:

Although EMAS is an official EU Regulation, it is binding only for organisations which voluntarily decide to implement the scheme. The EMAS Regulation includes the environmental management system requirements of the international standard for environmental management, ISO 14001, and additional requirements for EMAS registered organisations such as employee engagement, ensuring legal compliance or the publication of an environmental statement. Because of its additional requirements, EMAS is known as the premium instrument for environmental management.

In order to register with EMAS an organisation must comply with the following implementation steps (Article 4 of the EMAS-Regulation):

The EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme provides core indicators or Performance Indicator (KPIs) with which registered organisations can measure their environmental performance and monitor their continual environmental improvement against set targets.

Entered into force in January 2010, EMAS III requires registered organisations to report on key performance indicators in six key environmental areas. The indicators focus on direct environmental aspects and apply to all EMAS registered organisations.

EMAS registered organisations have to report on two energy efficiency indicators:

The indicator En1 is a measure of the energy consumed, e.g. to produce a certain product. By applying the indicator, organisations can identify energy “hot spots”, assess possible improvement measures and benchmark their production processes against similar organisations.

Through the application of En2, organisations can see how climate-friendly their energy use is. Renewable energy sources include:

The EMAS environmental core indicator of material efficiency is:

...
Wikipedia