Placing energy efficiency at the forefront of corporate strategy

In the last four decades, there have been several energy crises caused by a number of factors including peak oil production in major industrial nations where energy prices increased due to a shortage in supply. Back then, energy efficiency improvement was a major subject with a view to conserve energy. Today, over 80% of current energy needs are derived from fossil fuels, and with the low crude oil price of USD45 per barrel there is no conservation incentive for energy users. However, climate change caused by already accelerated emissions of greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere would be aggravated by a combination of low oil prices and abundance of supply. Therefore, corporations should start energy efficiency campaigns for the purpose of combating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions especially for process plants with a large energy consumption. The campaigns should include energy management, use of high energy efficient equipment and systems that monitor and optimise the use of energy. Energy benchmarking exercises would help to check and monitor energy efficiency performance levels for continuous improvement.