1. Analyse your current situation
Monitor your energy consumption
Identify the most energy-intensive activities
Conduct an energy audit
- Monitor your company's energy consumption
- Identify the most energy-intensive activities such as heating, cooling, lighting, steam or compressed air production, production processes, office equipment, etc. Also consider the effect of user behaviour on energy consumption.
- Depending on the size of your business, consider having a simplified diagnosis or energy audit conducted of your buildings or operating sites. Several types of partners can help you in this process:
- Consulting engineers and design offices approved to perform energy audits (list)
- Energy suppliers covered by the obligation scheme can offer energy efficiency improvement services to their customers
2. Develop an action plan
Make a list of actions
Find out about financial aid
Conduct an energy audit
- Based on the analysis carried out in the previous point, draft a list of priority improvement actions, taking into account for example:
- Their investment cost
- Their cost-effectiveness over their lifetime
- Their ease of implementation
- Find out about the opportunities in terms of financial aid:
- The Ministry of the Economy
- Energy suppliers subject to the obligation scheme
3. Train and raise awareness in your staff
Show exemplary commitment in terms of leadership
Involve all members of staff
Propose a training plan
- The success of your approach depends on exemplary commitment in terms of management
- The involvement of all staff is also a key element
- For example, it is important to raise awareness of the value lost through wasted energy:
- 1 cubic metre of compressed air (at 7 bars) costs approximately EUR 0.01: at this price, what is the cost of all leaks and waste over a year?
- 1 tonne of steam costs around EUR 25 to 30: how many tonnes of steam can you save in a day or in a year?
- Overheating a building can lead to an energy overconsumption of up to 6% per °C
- Train those of your staff who are involved in operations critical to the company's energy performance:
- Instilling good practices into new employees from day one
- Producing high-quality goods and services reduces wasted time and energy
- Examples:
- Define equipment shutdown procedures
- Foster positive behaviour
- Encourage precise use of fluids and energy (compressed air, steam, heat, chilled water, etc.) that are expensive to produce)
- Promote economic driving of vehicles
4. Reduce your energy needs
Avoid waste
Optimise the management of technical installations
Consider improvement projects
- Avoid waste and ensure efficient use of equipment and fluids: electricity, heat, cold, water, compressed air, steam, etc.
- Optimise the operation of your technical installations: simple temperature, speed or pressure adjustments can make visible improvements
- Carry out service and preventive maintenance operations in a timely manner. Examples:
- Eliminating leaks from a compressed air or steam network will avoid costly energy waste over the long term
- Changing the oil in a gearbox in a timely manner and adjusting the tension of transmission belts will reduce friction
- Proper maintenance of boiler burners is necessary to ensure the best possible combustion efficiency (legal obligation)
- Optimal operating condition is maintained by keeping the condensers of refrigeration installations clean. Similarly, evaporator icing should be avoided.
- Have you considered using available renewable energy sources or recovered heat?
5. Check the effectiveness of the measures taken
Energy accounting
Indicators
Implement an energy management system
- The various energy efficiency measures within the organisation and in the technical area will bring benefits regarding the company's energy consumption. However, it is necessary to monitor the evolution of energy parameters to:
- Sustain the profitability of the investments made
- Avoid reverting to bad habits
- Introduce an energy strategy into the corporate culture
- Based on the results of the diagnosis or energy audit, it is straightforward to set up an energy accounting system that will make it possible to allocate energy consumption to the company's departments and to track its evolution over time
- Energy efficiency indicators such as specific consumption (net energy per quantity produced) are a very practical way of monitoring the evolution of energy performance by production line or even by product type.
Click here for more information - An additional mark of long-term commitment comes through certification from an energy management system (such as ISO 50001) or environmental management system (such as ISO 14001). These standards have been designed to sustain the progress made through a proven continuous improvement process.
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This document is intended for information and to raise awareness. The information and values herein are provided for information only and must be verified by a professional before any decision is made. Klima-Agence declines all responsibility in the event of inappropriate use of its contents.