Bang for the energy buck
The “silent fuel” is making very loud waves. While there is a perception that green energy involves renewables and alternative energy pertains to carbonemitting fossil fuels, energy efficiency is critical in reaping green energy’s numerous benefits.
Established in 2010, the Industrial Energy Efficiency (IEE) Project was the response to the growing need to improve energy efficiency in South Africa. The programme is jointly implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the National Cleaner Production Centre South Africa (NCPC-SA), on behalf of the department of trade and industry. Other partners included the department of energy and the governments of Switzerland and the UK.
Now in its second phase, the programme achieved savings of some R1.7-billion over the five years to the end of 2015, which equates to 2019 gigawatt hours and 1.9-million tons of CO2 emissions.
Leading South African companies, i ncluding metals giant ArcelorMittal, have realised impressive savings through the energy interventions of the IEE Project.
“We are excited about entering into phase two of this project,” says IEE national project manager Alfred Hartzenburg. “We take for- ward hindsight, which makes a real difference and provides tangible benefits.
“One such hindsight was discovering that government departments are simply not talking to each other. A key performance indicator in this phase is to work with government departments, including the department of higher education to ensure greater enlightenment and understanding.
“We also will continue our baseline consumption exercises and intend expanding to eight sectors, continuing to foster and promote more implementation and efficiency skills,” said Hartzenburg.
The project’s ultimate goal is to demonstrate the positive impact of in-plant energy management systems in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, demonstrating their effectiveness and financial impact.
“In phase one, we i dentified what we considered the five industry sectors that consume as much as 50% of all energy generated in South Africa,” continues Hartzenburg. “It was decided that through industry focus we could make the biggest hit and we targeted agriprocessing, automotive, metals, mining and chemicals.
“We looked at what kind of structure we needed and found a dearth of information. Studies have been conducted, either by self-funded groups or government departments, but absolutely no co-ordinated database existed.
“We a l s o s t a r t e d a n e n e r g y benchmarking process, establishing what is being consumed by industries.
“What we found important is that we created an environment that enabled us to identify and measure those already ahead of the game. Subsequently, NCPC-SA trained a pool of auditors to ISOcertify companies and conducted o u r a wa r e n e s s i n i t i a t i v e s a n d train-the-trainer programmes to capacitate companies.”
South Africa is one of the first three countries worldwide to implement incentives and recognise progressive companies. It has not always been a popular entity, through suggestions to vendors and manufacturers about improvements to motors, for example. However, turnaround from criticism to buy-in has been significant.
“Where they were seeing problems, these entities are now seeing opportunities. Other reasons why buy-in was stymied included a legacy of poor government programmes and belief by South African companies that they did not need any assistance to improve.
“Another global factor is the belief that energy usage is an intellectual property right. However, as entities have started sharing information and speaking to and learning from others, they move forward, which is extremely rewarding.”
Hartzenburg says the bottom line is process optimisation, which should be the protocol. “Any energy efficiency efforts should precede renewable energy activities.
“Early adopters of our process improvement services are now seeing diminishing savings improvement as they have realised the benefits. They could now look at alternative energy options, such as solar, wind and biogas.”