EPA ENERGY STAR Research Articles

Boeing's Energy Management Program Leverages EPA Energy Star Resources to Improve

ABSTRCTThis article will describe the energy management system improvements made at the Boeing Company through its participation the Energy Star industrial partnership program. All improvements were based on the Energy Star guidelines: making a commitment; assessing performance and setting goals; creating an action plan; implementing the action plan; evaluating progress; reassessing; and recognizing achievements. Key among these were: formalizing a corporate energy policy; establishment of corporate energy and environmental goals; requiring each major site to develop improvement plans and projects to achieve those goals; creating a targeted energy conservation project investment fund to support the implementation of those projects; expanding energy bill payment and data collection service across all facilities; establishing a corporate-wide conservation scorecard system for monitoring progress; and improving internal recognition and communication processes. The success of Boeing's efforts was borne out by their achievement of the 2011 Energy Star partner of the year award for energy management.

GM's Robust Energy Management Meets “Challenge For Industry”

ABSTRACTEnergy use is a large essential expense incurred by manufacturers or facility operators that contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At General Motors (GM), although our expenditure for energy is not a large percentage of our total cost, we do spend in excess of $1 billion annually. GHG emissions from energy use represent over 7 million metric tons per year of GM's carbon footprint. Hence, a robust energy management business process is needed to meet the challenge for industry. Management of energy and carbon to reduce environmental impact has become important enough to be included in our business plan, just as safety, people, quality, responsiveness, and cost are. Following a model similar to EPA Energy Star's seven step approach, energy as an environmental element has been integrated into GM's business policy and model. Based on top-level commitment and public goals to reduce energy and GHG by 20% from 2010-2020, GM uses its standardized global manufacturing system (GMS) to ensure that en...

Energy Efficiency Opportunities In the U.S. Pulp and Paper Industry

ABSTRACT The U.S. pulp and paper industry consumes over $7 billion worth of purchased fuels and electricity per year. Energy efficiency improvement is an important way to reduce these costs and to increase predictable earnings, especially in times of high energy price volatility. There are a variety of opportunities available at individual plants in the industry to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner. This article provides a brief overview of the U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR® for Industry energy efficiency guidebook (a.k.a. the “Energy Guide”) for pulp and paper manufacturers. The Energy Guide discusses a wide range of energy efficiency practices and energy efficient technologies that can be implemented at the component, process, facility, and organizational levels. Also provided is a discussion of the trends, structure, and energy consumption characteristics of the U.S. pulp and paper industry, along with a description of the major process technologies used within the industry. Many energy efficiency measure descriptions include expected savings in energy and energy-related costs, based on case study data from real-world applications in pulp and paper mills and related industries worldwide. The information in this Energy Guide is intended to help energy and plant managers in the U.S. pulp and paper industry reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner while maintaining the quality of products manufactured. Further research on the economics of all measures—as well as on their applicability to different production practices—is needed to assess their cost effectiveness at individual plants.

Benchmarking weather sensitive plant level manufacturing energy use

Energy intensity of manufacturing varies due to the products produced and the efficiency of production. For some sectors a portion of the energy demand is weather sensitive. This paper applies stochastic frontier regression to auto assembly and pharmaceuticals. The effects of production, utilisation and weather on energy are estimated. The differences in efficiency are captured by a one-sided error term in the frontier model. Confidential plant level data provided by companies that voluntarily participated in this study are used. US EPA Energy Star programme uses the models to provide recognition of superior energy performance for plants in these industries.

An Analysis of Variation in the Energy-Related Environmental Impacts of LEED Certified Buildings

The US Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED guidelines have become the dominant third-party certification program for “green” buildings in the US. Given that buildings use 37% of all energy and 68% of all electricity while contributing substantially to air emission, waste generation, and water consumption issues in the US, one of LEED's purposes is to address the environmental impacts of energy use in buildings. This research analyzes (1) how well the LEED guidelines measure these impacts and (2) which parameters create the most variation among these impacts. Environmental impacts here refer to emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and particulate matter (PM10); solid waste; nuclear waste; and water consumption. Using data from the US Department of Energy, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the US EPA Energy Star program, and the USGBC, among others, models using Monte Carlo analysis were created to simulate the range of impacts of LEED-certified buildings. Various metrics and statistics were calculated to highlight the significance of variation in these impacts. Future research needs and implications of the results for LEED version 3.0 are also discussed.