US manufacturers get "why" resource efficiency is important. $5.3bn savings suggests they are also nailing the "how".

Two trips to the US in three months for myself and the Manufacture 2030 team, to meet some of the leaders in US manufacturing and resource efficiency, has cemented our belief that they continue to be at the fore-front of positive action to drive out costs, risks and impacts. Especially as manufacturing is seen to be responsible for over a third of the world's emissions and if the top five energy consuming manufacturing sectors in the US were their own country, they would rank 9th in the world in terms of total energy used.

We now look forward to our next online session - on the 8th November - with our friends at the US Department of Energy's Better Plants program to understand more about how they are helping major businesses to achieve some of the extraordinary economic and environmental outcomes below. (Click HERE to join us too).

The 2018 World Energy Engineering Congress in Charlotte started with a big-bang on the "why". Following the recent publishing of the impressive Third Way report on the importance of smarter energy use to US manufacturing - I was fully expecting to hear the strongest possible economic argument for greater urgency on energy consumption. But the opening panel - of Mexico's ex-President Felipe Calderón; a CEO; a "Futurist"; and an astronaut - went even further by leading on the imperatives of climate change and population growth.

With North Carolina only being hit by the latest hurricane in the previous days, the connection was tangible. Felipe Calderón highlighted that it's often argued (incorrectly) that we have a choice between the economy and the environment:

“That is a false dilemma,” he said. “We don't need to choose between economic growth and prosperity, and environmental responsibility. It is possible to reduce poverty and it is possible to reduce carbon emissions at the same time”.

This was backed by the CEO of Duke Energy (Lynn Good) and Ford's Futurist (Sheryl Connelly) but it was the famous US astronaut - Scott Kelly (who set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space) that stole the show with a passionate story of striving for seemingly impossible goals.

A key message from Scott was the importance of striving for big goals; by continually making lots of small improvements; and remaining focused on what you CAN control. This is the philosophy at the very heart of our mission here at Manufacture 2030 - to halve the amount of resources used in manufacturing in the next 10 years, by using the world's best-practice "playbooks" of actions and projects.

So, it feels like US business gets the wide range of "why's". What about the "how's"?

One of the most interesting sessions of the Congress was "The Art of the Hunt: Methods for Finding Savings". Al Hildreth of GM, was joined by Don Scarsella of Owens Corning and also Boeing and Ford Chrysler to focus on how they "treasure hunt" for savings; benefit from insight from peers; use Kaizen methods; and digitize the process to help scale the search.

From talking to many of the manufacturers, the power of applying the learnings from treasure hunts and from peers - both inside and outside the business - is clear. However, to unlock these financial benefits - both a discipline and the right tools are required to identify, prioritize, validate and execute the right energy efficiency projects.

Other notable sessions and lessons shared through-out the event included:

Bill Jerald, Chief Energy Engineer at CalPortland shared how his impressive energy program evolved/grew using a simple tool they built to track energy data, cost & projects but soon faced challenges maintaining it. His story of how they benefited from the process of investing in better utility payment/tracking systems highlighted how much more can be saved in this often-forgotten area.

Sharon Nolen of the Manufacture 2030 customer - Eastman Chemical Co. - gave another compelling presentation on how they use sustainability to add more power to their energy program. It was particularly great to see the UN Sustainable Development Goals being highlighted at the event and are worth looking up to guide your business strategy too.

Tracy Fialli, Principal Energy Engineer at Raytheon discussed how important it is to stay current, educated and benchmark with others on energy improvements and technologies - a key value of both the Manufacture 2030 platform and the US Department of Energy's Better Plants.

Chrissie Olson of 3M discussed the importance of empowering/enabling a stakeholder network in the business to support energy performance. She rightly championed the importance of collaboration with a diverse team to get high-quality knowledge sharing. This topic was taken further by the impressive Saint Gobain and Rochelle Samuel's story of how an innovative new wireless sensor technology was introduced by their sustainability champion network and that is delivering a 14% energy saving.

It was the the US Department of Energy's Q3 review of the Better Plants program that revealed some of the most impressive outcomes, but it was the way these were articulated that spoke volumes for how far the energy & engineering world has come in speaking the language that business leaders and investors understand.

To date, Better Plants partners (over 200 major manufacturers) have reported estimated, cumulative energy savings of $5.3 billion. By equating this to 63,000 average annual salaries of a US manufacturing worker, the DOE have neatly addressed the key concerns of US manufacturing leaders right now (i.e. "workforce, workforce, workforce"). The energy crowd are kept impressed by the more than 1 QUADRILLION Btu's that this also equates to. If you are a major US manufacturer and are not involved in the Better Plants program, you are almost certainly missing out on some extraordinary support.

As the Third Way report eloquently concludes:

"Whether it’s workforce opportunity, US competitiveness, or climate change, there are more than enough reasons to promote smarter, cleaner, more efficient energy use in the industrial sector. Many individual companies and manufacturing subsectors are already taking steps in the right direction."

Manufacture 2030 is excited to be at the fore-front of conversations to accelerate and scale the adoption of the best-practices that have been shared at these events (and those that are often still hidden away and gathering dust inside the shared drives of major corporates or in the soon-to-be-retiring heads of some of the world's best engineers).

We certainly are keen to hear from you if you are successfully positioning energy as a source of competitive advantage and strategic priority in your business. And especially if you want to.

Click to join our 8th November webinar with the US Department of Energy