Energy Star Helps Manufacturers To Achieve High Energy Performance

Abstract

From personal electronic devices to homes and office buildings, ENERGY STAR® is a recognized symbol of high quality energy performance which enables consumers, home buyers, and businesses to make informed energy decisions. Now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, within the construct of ENERGY STAR, is extending the benefits to manufacturers in new and meaningful ways. Through the development of tools and technical resources specifically targeting manufacturing companies, ENERGY STAR seeks to provide a means for these businesses to understand and achieve excellence in energy performance by reinforcing the link between energy, financial, and environmental performance. Discussed are the enhanced programmatic offerings as well as two new tools under development that will illustrate the impact of energy consumption on financial performance. The first tool will permit an assessment of energy performance, or benchmark it, at a plant level normalizing for such variables as product type, annual plant hours, plant capacity, annual product value, number of employees, and location. Use of this tool and the information it provides as a means to assess, track and provide targets for plant energy performance is examined. The second tool seeks to elevate the consideration of energy use to an executive level within an organization by calculating financial energy indices specific to individual companies and industrial sectors. These indices relate a business' energy use to such factors as net operating income, value of sales, net income, and so forth. Corporate executives, Wall Street analysts, and energy managers are intended to be the primary users of these ratios. Programmatic improvements to ENERGY STAR include greater networking among participants in the partnership and more opportunities for recognition of their achievements. With the new tools, resources, and program enhancements, it is believed that manufacturers will be equipped with valuable and credible information from which more informed and progressive energy performance decisions can be made. Further, these businesses will be doing their part to demonstrate that protection of the environment is good for business.