The Need for Better Energy Monitoring within Industry

Energy efficiency presents enormous opportunities for industry–reducing costs, stimulating economic growth, increasing productivity, and offering a significant reduction in environmental impact. Unfortunately, many companies–especially SMEs (small and medium enterprises)–still shy away from the opportunities that are available to them from energy conservation, due to a lack of in-house expertise, inadequate resources, or positive reinforcement through industrial feedback on the use of such techniques. Energy consumption is often ignored, with many companies not tracking their consumption data or having a thorough understanding of their primary energy needs or prominent areas of inefficiency. By speaking directly with companies about energy efficiency and collecting hard data, case studies have been developed, successfully demonstrating the benefits of implementing various energy efficiency strategies and the need for better energy consumption monitoring to ensure these projects are achieving desired energy reduction results. These case studies will be discussed in this paper.