U.S. CEEM Members in Action: Energy Efficiency as a Competitive Advantage

Last month at Industry Week’s 2012 Best Plants Conference in Indianapolis, U.S. CEEM member and corporate energy manager for 3M, Steve Schultz, spoke to how manufacturers can integrate energy efficiency into their operations to improve competitiveness. Schultz drew from 3M's longstanding corporate energy program to show how companies can incorporate energy efficiency to not only improve performance, but also to increase productivity and reduce environmental impacts.

Energy Investments Give 3M an Edge, Shape Innovations

As a testament to the success of 3M’s program, Schultz showed that while production increased 300% from 1973 to 2010, energy consumption rose only 4%. However, Schultz explained that without their corporate energy management program, which applies to all of the company’s business units, this significant improvement in energy intensity would not have been possible.

The program tracks energy use and costs at more than 240 of 3M’s locations around the world and established permanent energy teams 56 3M locations. Due to its success, 3M’s management has come to rely on these teams to identify energy-saving opportunities and implement actions to reduce energy costs.

Schultz went on to credit much of 3M’s success and innovation over the years to voluntary energy efficiency programs, saying that access to experts and the latest information helped 3M shape and design its energy management system.

“You don't have to be a big company to work on saving energy,” Schultz said. “Using the ENERGY STAR Guidelines for Energy Management can help a company of any size get started.”

Sharing the Success with Industry

Schultz’s goal was not just to discuss 3M’s energy accomplishments, but to demonstrate to other manufacturers the benefits and importance of energy efficiency, which is also an important role of U.S. CEEM as it seeks to help U.S. manufacturers save energy while improving competitiveness.

As U.S. CEEM grows, experiences from its individual members are continuously added and shared. This allows the Council to remain up-to-date with the latest energy efficiency best practices, technologies, and developments for manufacturers and enables it to effectively articulate industry’s perspective. The collective experiences from energy efficiency programs that U.S. CEEM members participated in, for instance, informed the development of the Superior Energy Performance (SEP) program.

Looking Ahead

Moving forward, 3M plans to continue working toward our 2015 goal of improving efficiency by 25% through a program that includes incorporating energy efficiency considerations into new product design. As new products and processes are developed, 3M energy teams will go through a process of taking stock of their existing cross cutting equipment such as steam, pumping and compressed air systems to match those systems’ output to the true energy requirements of the new manufacturing equipment.

This program will also engage employees to save energy at home as well as at work and will raise 3M’s expectations for their suppliers to work on improving the energy efficiency of their own operations. The experiences gained from this program will be shared with U.S. CEEM, and could be helpful if U.S. CEEM decides to address industrial supply chains.