Law number 1 of industrial energy efficiency: There is no silver bullet—no single
method or technology that ensures that energy use will be optimized. Any comprehensive
energy management program incorporates many different components that typically
require a wide range of expertise, software, and equipment, and it is not practical for an
energy manager to have full mastery of every aspect. Rather, the role of most energy
managers is to manage resources—mostly human resources—embodying the expertise
needed to accomplish corporate energy efficiency goals.
We can view the opportunities for improving energy efficiency in several different
ways. For example, the opportunities can be organized by:
• department,
• time frame,
• equipment, utility systems, and process.
Many companies prefer the departmental classification, as it provides a focus on the
administrative area within their organization where effort is needed to achieve specific
energy efficiency improvements. The time frame classification, on the other hand, is
helpful in deciding the order in which opportunities should be addressed