IEC President and LARC Regional Manager visit Mexico

Jacques Regis, IEC President, warned that
electrical energy efficiency is facing
challenges in the coming years

Latin America has been the venue of much IEC activity over the past few weeks. On 1-2 December 2009, Jacques Régis, IEC President, and Amaury Santos, Regional Manager of the IEC-LARC (Latin America Regional Centre), travelled to Mexico to meet with government authorities, industry leaders, the Mexican NC (National Committee) of the IEC and COMENOR (Consejo Mexicano de Normalización y Evaluación de la Conformidad), the Mexican Board of Standardization and Conformity Assessment.

Mitigating climate change through standardization

Their visit opened with a seminar on tackling climate change through standardization, held by the DGN (Dirección General de Normas), the Mexican standardization body, which is a department of the Mexican Ministry of Economy. In his address, Régis told attendees what the IEC has been doing to mitigate global warming through standardization. For more than 100 years, the IEC has been producing International Standards, which, he explained, are valuable tools for trade and innovation, security, performance and interoperability, as well as protection of the environment.

"The challenge for electrical energy efficiency will be particularly demanding in the coming years," Régis warned. "Energy consumption will double by the year 2050, even though, today, there are 1.6 billion people in the world who have no access to electricity. To complicate things further, in that same timespan we need to reduce our carbon emissions by 50 %. That means we have to be four times as efficient. We need to develop best practices to safeguard the environment and better use the world's finite resources – in short, we must learn to do more with less."

"One of the ways of addressing climate change is to increase the share of renewable energy in our power production. The IEC has been setting down the standardization needs to help adopt and establish these promising new technologies for some time. Renewable energy represents the future in power generation. The issue remains though of how to integrate them into existing networks. Many of the electrical networks now in place were constructed many years ago and were not designed to connect intermittently available sources of power. For this, smart grids need to become smarter. Much IEC work is also focusing on upgrading existing technologies to increase their energy efficiency", Régis continued. " Industry uses 50% of all electrical energy produced in the world. This could easily be halved by developing more efficient motors and systems. We can achieve many improvements today using existing technology. IEC International Standards form the foundation for present and future electrical energy efficiency."

Sowing the seeds of standardization

After the conference, Francisco Ramos, President of the Mexican NC, explained to the IEC officers how the Mexican system of standardization and CA (Conformity Assessment) is managed, and how national standards are adopted and harmonized with International Standards. Mexico, he said, is able to count on full support from its National Electrotechnical Committee, which helps all stakeholders collaborate within the structure of IEC in order to create a global system of international standardization, avoiding technical barriers to trade.

(From left to right) Ingrid Maciel Pedrote,
Secretary of the Mexican NC/IEC, Rafael
Nava, Vice President of the Mexican NC/IEC,
Juan Manuel Hernandez Zarate, Assistant
Secretary of the Mexican NC/IEC, Rosa María
Jiménez Ambriz, representative of CESPEDES,
representing Mexico before the WBCSD,
Jacques Regis, IEC President, Amaury Santos,
Regional Manager IEC-LARC, made up the panel
at the DGN seminar

MoU between DGN and higher education broadens awareness of standardization

A MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) exists between the DGN and two of the most important institutions of higher education of Mexico: the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and the IPN (National Polytechnic Institute). Ingrid Maciel, Secretary of the Mexican NC, explained that the purpose was to encourage the institutions to participate in standardization processes and cover them in their curricula, thus sowing the seeds of standardization in the minds of future generations of experts.

Captains of industry

On 2 December 2009, Régis and Santos attended the meeting in the CANAME (National Chamber of Electrical Manufactures of Mexico) with national representatives of Schneider, Siemens, Philips and Sony. These major global companies participate in mirror committees of the Mexican NC, and they reiterated their commitment to strengthen Mexico's participation in IEC standardization work.

Régis and Santos were the guests of honour at the Mexican NC's December meeting, where they learned more about the NC's organizational structure and standardization work undertaken during 2009.

Global Aspects of international standardization and Conformity Assessment

To conclude the visit, Santos attended an event organized by CONCAMIN, the Confederation of Industrial Chambers of Mexico, on the theme of Global Aspects of international standardization and Conformity Assessment. Santos emphasized the benefit of strategic use of International Standards for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and for all those involved in the standardization process.