During the last decade, taking care of the Energy Efficiency of facilities has become a normal practice for an increasing number of companies. Undoubtedly, minimizing our impact on the environment is paramount to preserve our planet. Notwithstanding, there is another aspect of energy efficiency that makes it even more attractive for companies.

An effective energy efficiency strategy can save loads of money to our business. This aspect is not addressed so frequently, maybe because the “environmental cause” is far more noble than this pecuniary aspect. However, since optimising energy consumption can be extremely cost effective, it’s a practice that should not be overlooked.

In the past, I had the opportunity to lead the implementation of a strong Energy Efficiency initiative in a multinational company. I received intensive training and worked in both, manufacturing plant improvements and increasing the energy efficiency awareness. This last activity involved promoting best practices and communicating the achievements among the employees and to the community.

Some time after we started implementing measures to improve our energy efficiency, I noticed that we were saving a lot of money. Those achievements were even more surprising considering the low investments we had done and the low cost of energy due to heavy government subsidies.

As a kick start for this topic in my blog, I’d like to highlight some important considerations I learned from my experience developing Energy Efficiency Strategies in manufacturing environments:

• Improvement opportunities should be detected systematically and methodically, if possible by a multidisciplinary team
• Initial training must be delivered to the people involved to give them tools to work with and also to generate in them an Energy Efficiency mindset
• Management support is crucial, especially in actions that involve changing old habits and procedures
• Every action should be managed as a small individual project
• Every measure must be carefully analysed before being implemented to determine if it’s worth doing in economic, operational and technical terms
• Results must be controlled, documented and sometimes additional measures must be taken to make actions sustainable in time
• Diffusion of the achievements among the company’s employees is a good way of increasing the general awareness regarding Energy Efficiency. However it’s necessary to implement additional initiatives to increase the employee’s involvement in the process

This is my first post related to Energy Efficiency and I just wanted to point out that implementing an Energy Efficiency Improvement Plan can generate substantial savings in a highly cost-effective way.

This kind of initiatives are even more beneficial in places where the cost of energy is high. However, to achieve sustainable savings, you should take a methodical approach and measure your progress and achievements.

In future articles I’ll address some of the points above and also share my experience in this area. Stay tuned!

How about you? do you have an Energy Efficiency Strategy in your company? Are you aware of the cost of your wasted energy? I look forward to your comments

Thanks for reading!