@Green July/August 2020 | Page 28

28 Industry Talk @green | July-August, 2020 Energy – a controllable resource Banks, Insurance , Companies New investments Competitors Customers Market pressure Technology core business Suppliers The Company Legal Pressure Taxes Authorities Service Policy Know How Transfer Utilities Financial Pressure Service ESCOs, Consultants Industrial Associations Using it efficiently helps to increase profits by reducing costs DEMAND SIDE By Ir Dr K. S. Kannan Ir. Dr. Kannan is Professor Emeritus, UTM currently attached to ISI Ventures, UTM. He is a professional engineer registered with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia and a Chartered Engineer registered with the Engineering Council, U.K. He is a Fellow of IEM Malaysia, IMechE UK and ASHRAE USA. He is a local energy consultant/trainer and has more than 30 years of experience in energy research and consultancy including collaboration with international energy organizations. His expertise is in energy efficiency practices & technologies. He has served as the National Project Manager for the UNIDO- GEF project on ‘Industrial Energy Efficiency for Malaysian Manufacturing sector’ from December 2011 to April 2017. He is the Technical Advisor for UNIDO in Malaysia. Access to energy is becoming more costly and environmentally damaging. The era of cheap energy is coming to an end in many countries Organisations of all types and sizes increasingly want to reduce the amount of energy they consume. It is driven by the need or desire to: • reduce costs, • reduce the impact of rising prices, • meet legislative or self-imposed carbon targets, • reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and • enhance the entity’s reputation as a socially responsible organisation. In tandem, governments increasingly want to reduce the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of their citizens and industries and are imposing legislative mechanisms to compel carbon reduction more and more frequently. The effective use of the Energy Management System (EnMS) will help organisations of any size to manage their energy use sustainably. This will result in: • Reduced costs • Reduced environmental impact • Increased competitiveness It is a scarce organisation that cannot make significant reductions in its energy costs by implementing small changes in how energy is used. The simple fact is rarely accepted by top management in organisations Energy cost can be reduced significantly – It may not require a financial investment A systematic approach will lay the foundations for significant and sustainable cost reduction in energy use for the organisation of all sizes It is not a difficult technical challenge; it is a challenge to how organisational resources, including energy and people, are managed. Even in organisations with world-class energy performance, there is always room for improvement. In Denmark, one of the world’s most energy-efficient economies, it is estimated that a further 40 per cent improvement is possible using currently available technology and best operating practices. What Is Energy Management? • “The judicious and effective use of energy to maximise profits (minimise costs) and enhance competitive positions.” • “The strategy of adjusting and optimising energy, using systems and procedures to reduce energy requirements per unit of output while holding constant or reducing total costs of producing the output from these systems.” • Energy management is effecting organisational, technical and behavioural actions in an economicallysound manner to improve the energy performance of an organisation. • Energy management means systematic attention to energy to continually improve the energy performance of an organisation and maintain these achieved improvements. It ensures that the organisation continuously passes through the cycle of making policy (including evaluation of objectives), planning actions, implementing actions and checking results, reviewing progress and updating policy and objectives as required. • Energy Management: – is a management process to proactively assess, manage and measure energy usage to assure that energy has been used efficiently – refers to a scheme of management rather than the implementation of specific hardware – will provide companies with technical and Figure 1: Industry Stakeholders management strategies to increase energy efficiency, reduce costs and improve environmental performance – covers all aspects of energy consumption, technical and non-technical Effective tools/instruments for industrial energy efficiency From an energy policy maker’s perspective, industry – as every other target group has to be considered as a customer. If the industry does not realise energy savings, a tool/instrument has to be considered a failure. Capable tools/instruments have to be customer-focused and tailored and therefore, can be defined by the following characteristics: • It reaches the customer • It draws the attention of the customer • It convinces the customer to act (decide to realise energy savings) • It makes the customer repeat action (continued energy savings) How to reach industry The best channels to “carry” energy efficiency to the industry are possibly provided by using the “day-to-day” business relations of a company (stakeholders), the industry’s network (see Figure 1). By feeding the energy efficiency message effectively through these channels, the energy issue could be integrated in the industry’s existing business procedure. Additionally, we have to know much more about our customer. Is the company big or small, energy-intensive or not? Does it work transnational or instead on a regional/local level. How to attract the industry’s attention To attract attention, we have to know that a company is not a black box. It has an owner, is led by management and has staff doing a different type of work. If we reach the company, we might have to deal with financial managers as well as site managers, with technical as well as with marketing people. Thus, depending on their respective professional background and education, very different drivers will attract their attention. These drivers can come from inside the company as well as from outside. • Internal drivers for energy efficiency can be situational factors, e.g. all kinds of problems affecting the core business (issues with quality, processes, production, resources) or opportunities (end of technical lifetime, an extension of production, new buildings, new products, new personnel). They present a situation in which a company might have to invest anyway. Why not link energy efficiency to it? • External drivers for energy efficiency are all kinds of pressure (financial, legal, market) but also incentives (subsidies, awards) or positive examples (from suppliers, other companies, planners etc). With pressure, a company has to act, while successful models can provide an impetus for imitation. In most cases these drivers present situations which involve at least one of the stakeholders, e.g. when facing a technical problem, a company has to contact a supplier for new technology, maybe a bank for money and a consultant to give support. These business contacts can be used as a “carrier” for energy efficiency. Figure 2 indicates the services that can be provided by the stakeholders. How to make industry act? Whether an energy efficiency measure will be realised by a company (or not), is in the end decided by the man-