The annual flagship publication of the IEA this year focuses on energy developments in China and India and their implications for the world. The World Energy Outlook 2007 charts a course to a more secure, competitive, lower-carbon energy system – a course that must involve the world’s two emerging giants”, said Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) today in London at the launch of the latest edition of the Outlook. Or ISO/TC 217 in standards-speak.07 November 2007 London - “The huge energy challenges facing China and India are global energy challenges and call for a global response. She is secretary of the International Standards Organization’s cosmetics committee. It’s too soon to say whether this means that all future lipsticks will always stay shiny for 12 hours, but “Iranian cosmetic manufacturers are determined to export in a big way,” said Mojdeh Rowshan Tabari of Iran. The Iranian cosmetics industry, for instance, is a driving force behind setting common standards for chemical analysis. Standardization is a global game in which anyone can play. #Mojdeh rowshan tabari iso#“Instead of moving forward inch by inch, it is time to go metric and start measuring success in meters.” Clothing and shoe sizes still differ from Europe to America, but the labels in quality garments include ISO standards on “weight, color and light-fastness, piling, water-resistance and reaction to acidity (sweat).” And a working group has been set up to set new standards for shoes the quality of buckles and laces, the strength of the heel and toecap, and so forth. “Business would like the trans-Atlantic cooperation to move forward at a much greater speed,” said Michael Treschow, chairman of cell-phone manufacturer Ericsson. The United States generally uses millimeters and centimeters to measure nuts and bolts for cars and planes, but sticks to feet and inches on most other products. The list goes on and on, saving a fortune for industries worldwide. Separate standards deal with the diameter of washers, the tolerance of bolts, the coating of nuts. Take screws: ISO 272 specifies widths across flats ISO 4757 deals with cross recesses and ISO 7721-1 deals with countersunk heads. All of it is numbingly technical, with more than 400,000 pages of standards drawn up by some 30,000 experts from 140 countries. Much of the standardization work is split between the ISO, the electrical commission and the International Telecommunications Union. CD-ROMs and DVDs are being standardized because the industry agreed to do so at the outset. You still can’t watch an American-made video with a European VCR or vice-versa. France, for example, chose the Secam television system and imposed it on its colonies in Africa, at the expense of Germany’s PAL system and the United States’ NTSC. Many national standards have the effect of stopping competitors. The organization, which represents manufacturers, said it doesn’t even know how many varieties of plugs exist. “We don’t have the power to say to countries, ‘You have to rip out all your sockets and replace all the plugs from your household appliances,’” said Dennis Brougham of the International Electrotechnical Commission. Discussions on a common standard for a plug began in the 1930s, yet it’s still a hodgepodge, the most common of which are American plugs with flat copper prongs, continental European plugs with round prongs, and British ones with rectangular prongs. So how come it doesn’t? Because even though dozens more standards are added every year in the relentless march toward harmonization and globalization, plugs are one of the stubborn holdouts. There are no laws to force compliance, just the power of the market and the common-sense fact that life is easier when your hair dryer plugs in everywhere on the globe. “Standards are all around us, but nobody sees them,” says Anke Varcin of the International Standards Organization, which coordinates the work of national institutions and works to increase public awareness of the 20,000 or so standards that harmonize everything from air-quality control through anticorrosion devices for underwater oil pipelines to the sweat resistance of a shirt. It’s why an American renting a Japanese-made car in Liechtenstein will see the same dashboard symbols as at home, and find batteries for his camera at a store in the Alps. An elaborate system of standards has seen to that. It’s no accident, for instance, that credit cards are the same size from Wilmington, Del., to Wellington, New Zealand. The humble screw, along with bolts, nails and all other types of fasteners, is subject to a mind-boggling 160 size and quality controls under an international system intended to make everyday life safer and simpler. GENEVA What’s in a screw? Well, there’s ISO 272, ISO 4757 and ISO 7721.
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