How U.S. manufacturing leads on energy efficiency

While Trump continues to push coal and hints at reducing carbon dioxide limits on plants - we at Manufacture 2030 spent last week with business leaders in the U.S. that are finding other impressive ways of increasing their competitiveness and attractiveness - through progressive and well co-ordinated energy efficiency programs.

We were delighted to be invited over to the the industrial heartland of Cleveland, Ohio by our partners in our M2030 bee software tool - the US Department of Energy (DOE) - for their three-day Better Buildings / Better Plants Summit. You can read more here on the superb DOE program behind this. Nearly 3,000 attendees, including many leading US manufacturers, came together to share and celebrate their extraordinary progress on making their businesses even more competitive, resilient and agile - led superbly by the energetic DOE team.

Progress on energy efficiency by manufacturers was center-stage at the event - with a key highlight being electronics giant Legrand's CEO - who keynoted on their continued commitment to energy productivity (while the sustainability & energy management managers from other businesses no doubt looked on with envy at such an engaged boss).

“We know there’s more opportunity available for us, and we’re going to go get it,” CEO John Selldorf said, reflecting on Legrand's achievement.

The company’s 14 U.S. facilities met their Better Buildings Challenge commitment to cut energy intensity by 25 percent within two years. Legrand have now achieved another 25 percent from a 2012 baseline. Selldorf announced that the company would now work toward another 13 percent within the next five years.

Amazing what support from the top will do and as expected, the topic of senior-level buy-in to energy efficiency was high on the agenda. It undoubtedly felt like those we met were making better business cases on energy management and once again the phrase "low hanging fruit" was echoing through conference rooms. But this time with a sense that this fruit was getting more and more abundant, as businesses got better at finding it. We were glad to hear that water efficiency was also on the lips of many at the event - as we are actively growing the M2030 bee best-practice in this increasingly important topic. As senior leaders get more engaged, it will be increasingly shorter-term risks like water that will be getting as much attention as energy costs.

There was constant talk of treasure hunts and increasingly unique and thorough ways of unearthing continuous energy efficiency improvement - from GM and L'Oreal swapping energy teams; to the US Dept of Energy creating Treasure Hunt Toolkits to help embed a more frequent and productive process around them. At Manufacture 2030, we know that there is significant variation in performance between facilities. By scaling up and digitizing the process of identifying, prioritizing and sharing best-practice/quick-win cost savings - you can make it even easier to build the business cases; make the savings; impress your leaders; and hit targets.

“Despite all the progress that we’ve made over the years, we still have so much to do,” John Hartke (new President of the Alliance to Save Energy) said at the Summit. “We’re still leaving so much energy saving potential on the table” — more than $100 billion per year by some estimates, he noted.

We were also lucky enough to take in 2 site tours in Cleveland - one with the epic steel plant run by ArcelorMittal (where 36 energy projects were developed and implemented in the last year with energy savings of more than $17 million annually) and the other with critical automotive paint and coatings supplier - PPG. It gave us a unique insight into how energy efficiency gets explored on the ground, among the constant pressures of safety and quality. ArcelorMittal are one of many US manufacturers that are working with the DOE's excellent 50001 Ready tool - that helps businesses embed the right ways of working to save energy. The fact such a huge energy consumer is taking this route shows that, however much you have done on energy efficiency, there is always an opportunity to develop better systems and processes. PPG are making superb progress with what is a committed and passionate workforce and continual investment in technology. There is a belief that combining the passion and expertise of their people with even better systems and best-practice sharing processes - they could achieve even more savings and impress key customers and prospects, such as GM (that make energy efficiency a supply chain priority).

Realizing that Cleveland/Ohio represents a real hot-bed of progress on energy efficiency, we also brought together representatives from the Ohio Manufacturers' Association and the Greater Cleveland Partnership's Energy Services team for lunch to explore how the City/State's manufacturers could become genuine leaders in capitalizing on more efficient operations - even while "workforce, workforce, workforce" still dominates their thinking. We at Manufacture 2030 have found a great opportunity in supporting existing groups and collaborations of businesses to collectively improve business performance - be it supply chains or industry groups. It was fascinating to hear how we might help the US "rust-belt" get the knowledge, capacity and capability to out-strip others in the increasingly frantic race to attract talent and investment.

Ultimately however, it was the forward-thinking and creative team behind the US Dept of Energy's Better Plants program (Rob Ivester, Eli Levine, Bruce Lung, Pete Langlois and colleagues) and the more pro-active member companies that impressed us the most (from all those above and the likes of Eastman, Saint Gobain [and I highly recommend a look at Ryan Spies memorable engagement initiative...], Electrolux, Ball Corp, General Mills, UTC, 3M and many more). At a time when many might think such a federal department may be hamstrung, they are convening and networking their companies together around an increasingly impressive "tool-box" of solutions and leveraging the extraordinary talent and resources of the National Laboratories (including the likes of the phenomenal Oak Ridge and the enigmatic Tom Wenning). If the Better Plants program continues to grow at the current rate and the investment in their training, tools and content stays protected, we expect to see U.S. manufacturing increasing their competitiveness even further.

We're looking forward to following up on the many we met that believe in the shared missions of Better Plants and Manufacture 2030 - and are looking to make it even easier to make energy efficiency happen in their plants!

Oliver Hurrey, Executive Director, Manufacture 2030

www.manufacture2030.com