Plant Level Energy Performance Benchmarking

Abstract

Since the early 1990's, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked with U.S. corporations to reduce their energy requirements in buildings and office space through voluntary programs such as ENERGY STAR®. Corporate partners within ENERGY STAR have enjoyed success by applying the principles fundamental to this program. However, a common view was held that ENERGY STAR did not fully address energy use and performance of manufacturing plants. While there are many partners primarily working in manufacturing industries within ENERGY STAR, the program to date has focused primarily on the energy use and performance of commercial buildings rather than manufacturing plants. In the upcoming year, the EPA is poised to deliver new program components to facilitate broader corporate participation in ENERGY STAR. The business-oriented approach for building owners central to ENERGY STAR will be expanded to accommodate the energy use of manufacturing businesses. With introduction of the enhanced industrial manufacturing offering, ENERGY STAR will have a complete group of tools that will appeal to all corporate partners. Through understanding of their performance relative to their peers, EPA hopes to make available to the public tools to assess the performance of their plants relative to their peers. The objective of these tools is to provide plant managers and corporate executives with actionable information that can make their plants more competitive, more profitable, and more environmentally benign.