Industry and Climate ChangeAround a fifth of all UK energy is used by industry and forecasts suggest that, if left unchecked, emissions due to the main sectors will rise to 116 MtCO2/year in 2020 – 22% of total UK emissions. The Carbon Trust has been working with industry since 2001 to identify opportunities for carbon savings. The most straight-forward of these are often in generic industrial technologies such as heating, lighting, compressed air, motors and drives and refrigeration. However, sector specific processes in industry are harder to address and organisations traditionally face a number of barriers to uptake of low carbon technologies.
- Technology upgrades require a significant capital investment;
- Lack of available capital for investment in new equipment/technology;
- Energy efficiency is not ‘front of mind’ and must compete for management time;
- Long life of equipment so few new purchases;
- Short payback periods (18 months – 2 years) often required;
- Lack of understanding of process energy use;
- Rarely a separate budget for energy efficiency measures;
- Companies are risk averse; real demonstrated energy savings needed before investment;
- Operational/quality control factors conflict with energy saving demands.
Pilot ProjectsThe Carbon Trust is piloting its Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator approach with three sectors:
- Animal Feed Mills
- Asphalt Manufacture
- Plastic Blow Moulding
The approach consists of three stages:
The aim of Stage 1 is to investigate the sector specific processes identified to build a detailed picture of process energy use. This will be achieved by collecting information from the process operators, equipment manufacturers and from equipment in use at a representative group of sites. This will lead to identification of practical, cost-effective carbon saving solutions.
Identified solutions are expected to include:
- Equipment upgrades;
- Upgrade of components;
- Changes to control settings;
- Process optimisation.
The aim of Stage 2 is to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness and carbon saving potential of the identified solutions. Data will be gathered which will provide evidence to support a business case for industry to adopt the solutions more widely.
The aim of Stage 3 is to replicate the solutions successfully demonstrated in stage 2, more widely across the industry sector, and potentially in other relevant industry sectors.
Having created a body of evidence, the Carbon Trust will put in place a programme to encourage uptake of solutions, in partnership with the relevant trade associations. In the longer term it is intended that the information and energy saving evidence gathered from the IEEA could be used to create a set of on-going, cost effective services for delivery via Carbon Trust Solutions, offering customised opportunity identification and implementation across a range of sectors.
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