What the industry needs from energy efficiency: reflections on energy efficiency programs in food & beverage sector

Panel: 1. Policies and Programmes to drive transformation

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Adam Pawelas, SA Evian, France

Abstract

Energy efficiency is an important building block of industry decarbonisation journey. Business case is compelling: improving bottom line, making company more resilient to energy price volatility, funding the decarbonisation projects, and other non-financial benefits (broader sustainability credit). Yet there are also factors or conditions when energy efficiency does not work this way. These conditions are: focus on quick one-off savings and not investing into energy efficiency culture, capability gap to deliver and sustain efficiency improvements, wrong efficiency metrics not delivering meaningful information on performance, rebound effect eating out efficiency gains.

In order not to let the energy efficiency fail or plateau out the industry needs to stay aware of the pitfalls as above. The success factors for sustained benefits in energy efficiency are: (1) understand the nature of energy efficiency and its metrics, (2) make energy efficiency a program encompassing wider purpose, transformation and cross-functional collaboration, (3) take advantage of both generic techniques as well as scout new solutions, (4) trim the program to resources available internally and externally, (5) create barriers against rebound effects, (6) look out for education, standards, services, technologies, financial incentives, and other resources. Examples will be discussed.

From the market and policy making perspective the industry has the following needs supporting efficiency agenda (addressing factor 6 from the list above): education, communication and industry collaboration, incentive schemes for financing and technology adoption, direct knowledge transfer to smaller companies and support to less mature markets, coordinated standards of equipment and energy efficiency techniques to streamline efficiency features in projects. Examples of concrete needs will be discussed.

Watch presentation