Page 46 - North American Clean Energy July August 2015

wind power

Beneits of

Accreditation

to the Clean

Energy Industry

by Mike Buzard

ACCREDITATION EXISTS IN MULTIPLE INDUSTRIES AND SECTORS OF THE WORLD. Beyond
accreditation of the testing, inspection, and certiication entities, which support the clean

energy industry, accreditations exist and are sought out in academics, medicine, engineering,
investment and computer science, to name just a few areas.

What is accreditation?

Accreditation is “the third-party, independent evaluation of conformity assessment bodies
against recognized standards to carry out speciic activities to ensure their impartiality
and competence.” he impartiality and competence aspects of accreditation are what drive
global markets to accept and trust the accreditation process. However, anyone can claim to

be accredited in an efort to promote their product – how can a manufacturer, regulator, or
end consumer trust those claims? What mechanisms exist to ensure that this “independent
evaluation” took place to ensure the impartiality and competence of the entity claiming to be
accredited?

he pertinent areas for the clean energy industry are in testing, inspection, and certiication
of the products (and their installation) used to harness these renewable resources. Two
international organizations exist which oversee the accreditation of organizations that
perform these services: ILAC (the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation) and

IAF (the International Accreditation Forum).

International accreditation groups facilitate uniication
ILAC and IAF exist, in part, to ensure that accreditations are undertaken impartially, fairly,

and in such a manner that an accreditation granted by a member body in one economy can
be considered equivalent to the same accreditation granted by a diferent member body in
another economy.
hese “Mutual Recognition Agreements” (MRAs, or in the case of IAF, the Multi-Lateral

Arrangements) are designed to facilitate a reduction in Technical Barriers to Trade, with the
goal of having products tested, inspected, or certiied once, and accepted by all other member
economies. his helps to reduce time-to-market as well as costs to the end user associated
with multiple rounds of testing, inspection, and possibly certiication.

Each accreditation body belonging to these international groups is rigorously peer evaluated
on a regular basis to ensure that the accreditation services ofered remain compliant with
agreed-upon, international criteria. Regulators and industries that leverage accreditation have

seen the beneits of accepting these peer evaluation results rather than spending money on
additional reviews of the accreditation bodies.

Accreditation activities stress impartiality and competence

Testing and inspection fall under the auspices of ILAC, and bodies performing these services
are accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2005 and ISO/IEC 17020:2012, respectively. Certiication
activities take part under the IAF umbrella, and the bodies performing these activities are
accredited to ISO/IEC 17065:2012.

All of these conformity assessment activities stress impartiality and competence of the body
performing the task, but certiication asks for an additional layer of impartiality in requiring
that the Certiication Body (and its parent company, as well as any companies under its
control) be independent of the products that are being certiied. For example, a photovoltaic

manufacturer could operate a Certiication Body in accordance with ISO/IEC 17065:2012 only
if that body does not certify photovoltaic products. his level of “independence” is somewhat
unique among the three standards; ISO/IEC 17025:2005 does not discriminate at all against
the possibility of a manufacturer’s testing laboratory that tests their own products, and ISO/

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