Chemical Processing - December 2007 - (Page 15)

EnErgy SavEr << Fool your bosses but making excuses instead of improvements is a risky strategy “Do nothing” may be a valiD way of Dealing with energy costs. it’s a particularly attractive choice because it presumes you can operate the plant the way you always have. you don’t have to run the gauntlet of approvals to get money for energy improvement projects and you don’t have to force people to change behaviors and procedures. you avoid the risk of getting fired because the project that you fought to get approved failed to meet its projected performance measures. Doing nothing saves you from facing those problems, but it fails to shield your organization from the growing loss of income attributable to energy waste. top management may not track energy, but they do track money. So as it turns out, the favorite targets are maintenance (which can always be deferred, right?) and labor, assuming you haven’t already trimmed payrolls to the bone and then some. • Pass the costs increases on to your customers. there’s only one problem with this concept: the competition. Customers can take their business elsewhere if they don’t like the price you charge. Compensate for any product price increases with enhanced service that presumably doesn’t add to your expenses in other ways. • alter the mix and quality of materials that are used in your final product. for example, use more of a lowercost intermediate material to extend a more-expensive one. that’s one way to hold down costs, but you run the risk of alienating customers with junk products. • Change your accounting practices for energy costs. in other words, change the way facility-wide energy bills are broken down for assignment to individual departments. many organizations have one meter for electricity, for example. an accountant merely prorates the total bill over all the departments by some artificial measure, such as number of employees or square feet — measures which usually are poor indicators of energy use, but they are convenient for the accountant’s task. Use a spreadsheet to model energy cost allocations under different scenarios. find an allocation that works to your benefit and persuade the finance controller to adopt your approach. • get political and start lobbying your legislature to ease restrictions on energy supply. Presumably, if we dig, drill, refine, and generate more power, the increase in supply will drive prices down. Corporate officers and politicians understand “price.” any discussion about how energy is used (and wasted) gets too complicated. by focusing on price, you keep it simple, and therefore increase your chances of getting political support. good luck. CP Christopher Russell, contributing editor CRussell@Putman.net www.energypathfinder.com, blog: http://energypathfinder.blogspot.com november 2007 • 15 It fails to shield you from loss of income attributable to energy waste. “doing nothing” about energy eventually forces you to cover your tracks. following are just a few suggestions about how to “do nothing:” • blame your energy expenditures on ever rising energy prices. you don’t set the price for fuel and power, the market does. you’re at the mercy of the market. front-office people don’t always understand how your mechanical systems use energy, but they certainly understand price. to strengthen your case, start charting energy prices over a specific period of time. Pictures like this are worth a thousand words. Use these price data charts to explain why your energy expenses continue to increase. • Remind your management that your competitors have to purchase energy, too, so they are facing the same problems and therefore the playing field stays level. Don’t mention that your competitors may be addressing their energy waste problems, because that would shoot a hole in your “level playing field” claim. • Cut other expenses. as your energy bills go up, the money to pay them has to come from somewhere. www.chemicalprocessing.com http://www.energypathfinder.com http://energypathfinder.blogspot.com http://www.chemicalprocessing.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chemical Processing - December 2007

Chemical Processing - December 2007 Contents From the Editor ChemicalProcessing.com Field Notes In Process Energy Saver Compliance Advisor 2007 Vaaler Award - The Quest Ends Take Equipment Diagnostics to a New Level Better Bellows Boosts Blending Process Puzzler Plant InSites Equipment & Services Product Spotlight/Classifieds Ad Index End Point

Chemical Processing - December 2007

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