What practical ways are manufacturers reducing both energy cost and carbon emissions?

Manufacturers face some tough choices. After two years of disruption caused by the global pandemic, rising energy costs are the latest in a long line of challenges to threaten their profitability. And unfortunately, the future trend for gas and electricity prices continues to be upwards. 

At the same time, manufacturers still have tough net zero goals to reach – and the time left to achieve them is just getting shorter and shorter. In today’s environment, it might feel impossible to deliver against both your financial and environmental responsibilities. In fact, there are plenty of sweet spots where these priorities can co-exist. 

Many manufacturers are recognising that the more independent they are from the global energy market, the better they can plan and manage their cost base – and the more they can reduce their carbon emissions. What’s more, integrated, on-site energy solutions can enhance sustainability credentials, providing a competitive edge at a time when retailers are looking to decrease Scope 3 emissions from their suppliers.

Download your briefing paper to find out how you can balance your financial and environmental demands. Below you can also find a few of the ways we’ve helped leading manufacturers to reduce both their costs and carbon emissions.

Continental 

As one of the top five biggest automotive suppliers worldwide, Continental has a number of engineering and manufacturing centres, which produce electronics, tyres, transmission belts, air conditioning lines, and more. 

One of their manufacturing sites was experiencing weekly power outages, due to national grid issues that were out of their control. This was disrupting their production operations, and wasting time, money and resources. By installing a Combined Heat and Power system, they were able to reduce their reliance on the national electricity grid and ensure production resilience – creating many financial benefits. It’s also reduced their carbon emissions by 14%.

Biomar

With more than 17 production facilities supplying over 90 countries, Biomar are one of the world’s top aquaculture companies, producing high-performance feeds for over 45 different aquatic species.  

While they wanted to adopt a much wider environmental focus, they recognised they did not have the internal expertise to build a credible pathway to net zero. We helped them to build a science-based pathway to net zero across their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, enabling them to align to SBTi and do that as cost effectively as possible.

Pincroft  

Pincroft is one of Europe’s largest commission textile finishers, finishing a diverse range of fabrics that are exported to more than 80 countries worldwide. Their operations are very energy intensive, requiring large amounts of hot water and steam alongside a substantial amount of electricity.  

They believed that energy was being wasted across their operations, however they did not have the visibility required across their energy-consuming assets to prove this and take corrective actions. Harnessing Panoramic PowerTM technology, they were able to identify and address energy hotspots – reducing their weekend energy spend by 94% and weekday energy spend by 29%.

Reducing carbon emissions isn’t just the right thing to do for the planet – it makes good commercial sense, at a time when consumers and retailers are choosing to buy from manufacturers who demonstrate strong green credentials.