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Institutionalization of Industrial Best Practice of Energy Efficiency: The Case of a Global Manufacturing Organization
Abstract
This paper discusses an on-going effort of collaboration between the Missouri Industrial Assessment Center of University of Missouri, and a large industrial organization to institutionalize best practices of energy efficiency within the organization's global network of manufacturing companies. It also outlines a computer-aided framework developed to help such effort, which closely follows the ISO50001 standard, and represents a comprehensive knowledge base and project tool, providing support to the processes, tasks and documentation of the cycle of continuous improvement.
... More than 500 MU students have been trained in the concepts and techniques of industrial energy efficiency, with many of them now working in industry, leading their organization's energy efficiency initiatives. For example, one of our graduates is leading a multi-national manufacturing organization's global effort to institutionalize best practices in energy efficiency at its 150 manufacturing sites with an estimated potential saving of $50M annually, and our former Lead Student is currently a state energy manager and part of the state government energy team (Wu, Ponte, & Pinthuprapa, 2013). ...
This paper reports a problem-based learning model for the training of university students in the area of industrial energy efficiency, and discusses its context, contents, and the results from its implementation. The impact has been significant, with hundreds of university graduates trained and many of them now working in industry, leading their organization’s energy efficiency initiatives.
Although energy efficiency implementation is increasingly being recognized by policymakers worldwide as one of the most effective means to mitigating rising energy prices, tackling potential environmental risks, and enhancing energy security, mainstreaming its financing in developing country markets continues to be a challenge. Experience shows that converting cost-effective energy savings potential, particularly the demand-side improvement opportunities across sectors, into investments face many barriers and unforeseen transaction costs. This paper draws upon selected experiences with financing energy efficiency in developing countries to explore the key factors of various programmatic approaches and financing instruments that have been applied successfully for delivering energy efficiency solutions. Through case studies, a diverse range of institutional issues are examined related to the identification, packaging, designing, and monitoring approaches that have been used to catalyze traditional and innovative financing of energy efficiency projects. With adequate liquidity in major developing country markets and availability of modern energy savings technologies, it is often the institutional issues that become a key challenge to address in order to finance and implement robust programs. As further operational experience is gained, increased knowledge sharing can lead to scaling-up of such energy efficiency investments. The paper concludes with some ideas for accelerating implementation.