Who doesn’t like saving money? No one, that’s who. And saving energy is an easy way to save money. It’s also a good way to show that you, your employees and your company are considerate neighbors and partners who care about the environment.
The Department of Energy provides a number of programs that help individuals and companies save energy. One of those programs is Better Buildings, Better Plants, a program that partners the government agency with leading manufacturers and industrial-scale, energy-using corporations who demonstrate a voluntary commitment to improving energy performance by signing a pledge to reduce their energy dependency by 25 percent over a 10-year period (an Atlas Copco team member serves as an independent consultant for the Department of Energy in the Better Plants program and, based on his extensive industrial background and more than 30 years of experience in the plant engineering field, provides third-party, best practices advice to program participants to help make their facilities more energy efficient).
More than 160 industrial companies (encompassing 2,400 physical facilities) have signed on, representing 11.4 percent of the total manufacturing energy footprint in the U.S. And managing the cost of compressed air, considered the fourth utility, through the proper sizing, mix and end use is an easy way to do that.
What is the Better Plants program? It’s not an audit. And it’s not an air scan. It’s a top-to-bottom program that enlists a mix of independent industry experts who train facility managers on ways they can improve their energy performance without impacting productivity (or, in many cases, improving it). Data is collected for weeks before the in-plant training (which takes place in one of the manufacturers’ facilities and not in a generic training facility), and industry energy experts, under the supervision from the Department of Energy, train managers to look for and correct energy waste.
The Better Plants in-plant program will provide:
- Assistance in establishing and analyzing key energy performance metrics
- Help identifying emerging, energy-efficient technologies applicable to plant operations
- Facilitate networking and peer-to-peer sharing with other partners
- Technical in-plant training opportunities on common energy-use systems and plant-wide energy management
- Access to proven energy analysis software tools and other technical resources from DOE, states, utilities and other partner organizations
- Priority access to DOE's Industrial Assessment Centers for small- and medium-sized facilities and combined heat and power (CHP) screenings for qualifying facilities
- Opportunities to participate in Better Plant’s targeted supply chain efficiency and water savings initiatives
- National recognition, including letters form DOE leadership, certificates, invitations to special events, media opportunities and more
There’s no sense in spending time and energy reinventing what someone else has already perfected. To learn more about the Better Plants program and to see how it can help you and your company save energy, click here for additional information. Contact the DOE to see how you can get started today.
If you’ve already participated in an in-plant program, please let us know how it helped you save money in the comment section below.
