Peter Garforth heads a specialist consultancy based in Toledo, Ohio and Brussels, Belgium. He advises major companies, cities, communities, property developers and policy makers on developing competitive approaches that reduce the economic and environmental impact of energy use. Peter has long been interested in energy productivity as a profitable business opportunity and has a considerable track record establishing successful businesses and programs in the US, Canada, Western and Eastern Europe, Indonesia, India, Brazil and China. Peter is a published author, has been a traveling professor at the University of Indiana at Purdue, and is well connected in the energy productivity business sector and regulatory community around the world. He can be reached at [email protected].
The community in question is host to a major industrial sector, itself challenged to deliver substantial greenhouse gas reduction. The original energy plan included a strategy to achieve this by “Repurposing” wasted energy (i.e., waste-heat recovery) to be used in the community for heating and cooling buildings. Over time, the industrial sector has grown faster than the community as a whole, substantially increasing the scale of this opportunity for both parties. Thus, a strategy of the previous plan could potentially be “Reused” now with a far greater value.
The previous plan did identify the potential role of many newer technologies. The last decade has seen many of these technologies dramatically decrease in cost and increase in capability. Technologies once deferred in the previous plan’s recommendations can now be revisited, essentially “Reusing” the original structured analysis, but reassessing the viability in today’s reality. In a similar way, the previous plan postulated the benefits of new governance, operating and management models, many of which were thought to be too disruptive a decade ago but are now considered mainstream and could be a “Reuse” of prior assessments.
Even though more than a decade has past, the analytical process followed during the development of the original plan would remain much the same today. However, the analytical tools have become more flexible, capable, and less expensive. This highlights another opportunity to “Reuse” the original analytical process but using a more modernized toolset. As a rule, the effort to design and approve processes is the more resource intensive part of any analysis. Therefore, this also creates an opportunity to “Reduce” the overall effort, cost, and timeline.
In this example, the potential “Refusal” to develop a zero-based new plan, the “Reuse” of valid strategies and analytical processes from the previous plan, and the “Reduced” planning effort and costs could rapidly lead to an adjusted game plan in a fraction of the time.
The value of any strategic energy plan is ultimately the avoided energy and carbon costs, and the collateral environmental and other value it creates. In a manufacturing world these collateral benefits can include improved product quality and reduced waste. The energy manager’s role is tough enough—effectively “Reusing” prior work can be a high-value low-cost strategy to their success!
This story originally appeared in the November 2021 issue of Plant Services. Subscribe to Plant Services here.
