As we face the growing likelihood of federal control of greenhouse gas emissions, either through legislation passed by Congress or the unilateral action of the Environmental Protection Agency ¹, a key issue for many companies going forward will be managing their greenhouse gas, or GHG emissions.

If the EPA captures control of GHG regulation, as the current activities suggest they might², the implications for the many companies that will have to meet the established regulatory threshold will be significant³. Therefore positioning oneself to reduce your facility’s production of GHG emissions — either directly or indirectly — becomes more than good economic or environmental policy, it becomes a matter of legal compliance. One such route to emission control is through energy consumption control. In particular, companies can focus on controlling the energy intensity of its production processes.

In other words, energy intensity is the measure of how much energy is required to produce a unit of output. Namely, the more energy required to make the product, the higher the product’s energy intensity level. Moreover, the higher energy intensity of the company’s production process, the higher its level of GHG emissions, on average. This is true for both direct and indirect emissions. Firms that posses high energy intensities consume significant amounts of energy, the majority of which come from fossil fuels — which supplied 92 percent of energy consumption in 2008 according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), as seen in the chart below⁴.

Therefore, high energy intensity firms present excellent candidates to develop initiatives that foster energy savings and environmental leadership, as well as assisting these same firms for the eventual onset of greenhouse gas regulation if the EPA elects to continue to pursue its current course⁵.

To this end, the U.S. Department of Energy has developed its Save Energy Now LEADER program. This program is designed to assist businesses in both quantifying and reducing their energy intensity and consumption, which in turn will help them reduce their GHG emissions. As noted above, energy usage and GHG emissions are often closely tied together. In fact, according to the Department of Energy, “the U.S. industrial sector accounts for … nearly 30 percent of the energy used nationwide and 27 percent of the country’s carbon emissions.”⁶ Therefore the companies that commit to joining this program not only take a leadership role in controlling their energy usage and intensity — a 25 percent reduction in energy intensity over 10 years is required for participation in the program⁷ — they also take a significant role in reducing GHG emissions.

To this end, 32 companies have signed on to the Save Energy Now LEADER Program. These companies have taken a leadership role in recognizing the importance of reducing the energy intensity of the production processes, and also will benefit from the reduction of their GHG emissions from these energy usage reductions.

Many of these companies are acknowledged leaders in addressing energy concerns. In fact, nearly half (15 companies) are members of the Alliance to Save Energy ⁸. At Orion Energy Systems, we also salute the foresight of these companies and their leadership on this critical economic, energy and environmental issue. Moreover, we are proud to count 13 of the initial signatories as existing customers of Orion as seen in the chart below.

Table 2: Energy Savings Reduction by Orion Customers

As seen in the chart above, the 13 Save Energy Now LEADERS, who also are Orion customers, have saved more than 147 million kilowatt-hours — the average American home in 2007 consumed 936 kWh⁹. These savings translate into significant GHG emission reductions, including nearly 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 2 tons of methane.

Orion is proud to have provided its customers with such potent tools to reduce both energy consumption and GHG emissions. Orion is committed to developing additional avenues for both existing and prospective customers to maximize the benefits of both energy efficiency and environmental stewardship for all stakeholders involved.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under Energy Efficiency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.