Compliance with European Union Energy Legislation

   Emerson’s Steve Offer presented at the Emerson Exchange Brussels conference to provide ways to improve energy efficiency and comply with the EU Energy Efficiency Directive.  He opened providing an update on the legislation which targets 1.5% energy savings per country. Manufacturers and producers have to have their energy usage monitored and identify savings opportunities. By 2020, a cap and trade system is set to drive carbon emissions pricing from 6 Euros to 20 Euros per ton.

   Right now, the directive is in phase 3 and the cap has been reduced by 21% from 2007. This phase became effective in 2013 and calls for a 1.74% cap reduction each year from 2013-2020. By reducing the cap, the price of carbon emissions continues to rise.

To meet the cap reductions, manufacturers either buy carbon credits, reduce production or implement energy efficiency programs. Most choose the path of energy efficiency.

CO2 comes from the combustion of fuels. The key is to effectively measure the flow and composition of these fuels along with the air used in combustion to determine the amount of CO2 produced. The calculations from these measurements provide the proof of carbon produced.

Manufacturers need an energy policy. An energy manager typically drives the energy policy. An energy management information system collects the measurements, reports on the usage and provides the data to make decisions. The data needs to be available to cross functional teams to implement energy saving and optimization projects.

Components of the system include data historians, measurements and control system calculations as inputs to the energy information management systems. Many times, measurements are missing since they were not required by the control strategy. Wireless devices can fill in these holes where wired infrastructure is not in place.

If many of the loops are in manual, energy is being wasted. A focus should be to get them to run in automatic. Next the variability of these loops need to be reduced through better tuning and model predictive control. As you continue down this  path, energy is saved and the process becomes more robust and reliable. By focusing on the powerhouse and boilers, large energy savings and reduced carbon emissions are likely.

Steve shared some examples of savings from projects. One site saved 47% on their energy usage even though the focus was on carbon emission reductions. The project quickly paid for itself.

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