Industrial Systems

Within world industry, about 49% of onsite energy is lost to waste and inefficiency ¹. Systemic changes in the structure of manufacturing plants can reduce these losses.

Sources: the Building Energy Codes Program ², Elson et al. ³, Global Energy Assessment ¹, Hedmon et al. ⁴, IEA ⁵ and ⁶, the Department of Energy ⁷, UN Environment ⁸, UNIDO ⁹.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the practice of measuring the energy performance of plants across an industry and setting the best performing plants as a standard. As of 2010, there is an estimated potential of 23-31 exajoules of energy savings through benchmarking, mostly in low-income countries ⁹.

Benchmarking programs such as the Superior Energy Performance (SEP) can show financial payback times of less than two years ¹⁰.

Motor and Steam Systems

Motor systems use 10,700 TWh of electricity each year, of which 5700 TWh are used by industrial motors ⁸. Their efficiency will increase by an estimated 14% by 2040 under business as usual, or by 35% under accelerated efficiency policies ⁵.

There is an estimated savings potential of 8.8 exajoules per year from steam system energy based on 2005 usage ¹. These savings can be realized at a cost of 1.4 to 14.4 ¢/kWh ¹¹.

Combined Heat and Power

Conventional thermal power systems waste much heat and operate with an efficiency of about 45%, whereas a combined heat and power (CHP) system generates electricity and captures exhaust heat for direct use. The combined system operates with efficiencies of 65-75% ¹², up to 89% ¹³. We estimate a technical potential of about 75 GW additional CHP capacity in the United States ⁷, of which about half should be economically viable ⁴.

Conversely, high temperature waste heat from industrial processes can be recovered for electricity production. The United States has a technical potential of 8,840 MW from waste heat to power (WHP) systems, of which 2,904 MW should be accepted by the market ³.