Novel concept of context sensitive energy and environmental management system for support sustainable development of industrial companies

Panel: 2. Sustainable production design and supply chain initiatives

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Fouad Al-Mansour, Josef Stefan Institute, Energy Efficiency Centre, Slovenia
Boris Sucic, Jozef Stefan Institute, Energy Efficiency Centre, Slovenia
Matevz Pusnik, Jozef Stefan Institute, Energy Efficiency Centre, Slovenia
Tomaz Vuk, alonit Anhovo, d.d., Slovenia

Abstract

The concept of sustainable development is broad and represents the way in which human activities impact on the economic development, environment and social well-being. The objective of sustainable development is to ensure economic growth without jeopardising economic development, social well-being and natural environment of future generations.

Energy consumption in industry plays a key role in reaching the goals set for the transition towards the sustainable economy, putting energy efficiency up front with the highest priority. The role of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) is recognised as an enabler of energy efficiency in industry. Insufficient or inappropriate monitoring of energy consumption usually leads industrial companies in a wrong directions, leading to not knowing what potential they have for profitable energy investments. The use of system control and data acquisition systems (SCADA) for monitoring process behaviour in industrial companies has increased, but in many cases such systems are not connected to the energy consumption optimisation.

The paper presents a novel concept of the context sensitive energy and environmental management system and a case study of its implementation in energy intensive industry. A concept of the tool has been developed for achieving energy savings and emissions reduction through the system of metering, monitoring and evaluation of energy, environmental and economy performance. The main pillar of the tool is the knowledge repository and its integration with ambient intelligence based systems. The presented case study shows a repeatable and practical application of energy cost centres based modelling of energy consumption in energy intensive industrial companies. Also, it has been confirmed that monitored energy consumption enriched with context from ambient intelligence data can be the basis for the identification of energy savings.