In October 2021, the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) celebrated energy awareness month with a series of free webinars in partnership with the Better Plants program. These webinars offered strategies to master facility energy use, best practices from energy efficiency goal achievers, and the latest tools from AMO for manufacturers across the industrial sector. Scroll below to watch one or all the webinars in the series. The Better Plants team has also prepared helpful PDFs to accompany each webinar and provide expanded content on each topic.
The webinar topics include:
- The Quick Start Guide to Saving Energy for Small to Medium Manufacturers
- The Updated Energy Intensity Baselining and Tracking Guide
- Understanding Your Electricity Bills
- Understanding Your Natural Gas Bills
- Understanding Your Water Bills
- Lessons learned from Goal Achievers
Additional AMO webinars are also available on our Workshops and Webinars Datatable.
The Quick Start Guide for Small and Medium Manufacturers
More than one-third of the energy consumed in the United States (more than $200B a year) is used to power our manufacturing plants and industrial factories. Saving energy can lead to cost savings and strengthen the company’s manufacturing competitiveness. The vast majority of manufacturing companies in the United States are considered to be small, and for many of these small to medium-sized manufacturers, it can be difficult to know how to tackle saving energy, especially with limited budgets and bandwidth.
Use this webinar as a resource as you begin your sustainability journey.
Download: Saving Energy: A Quick Start Guide for Small to Medium Manufacturers (PDF)
Download: Webinar Transcript
The Updated Energy Intensity Baselining and Tracking Guide
In this webinar, participants learned about the Energy Intensity Baselining and Tracking Guidance, our tool that helps companies meet the Better Plants program’s reporting requirements by describing the steps necessary to develop an energy consumption and energy intensity baseline and to calculate consumption and intensity changes over time.
The Department of Energy has developed a free companion Energy Performance Indicator software tool (EnPI) that can be valuable to many types of organizations in the baseline development and tracking process, especially those looking to validate their energy savings. The methodologies and guidance within the document are applicable to any organization interested in developing an energy consumption and intensity baseline to track changes to those metrics on an annual basis.
Download: Energy Intensity Baselining and Tracking Guidance (PDF)
Download: Webinar Transcript
Understanding Your Electricity Bills
Learning to read your utility bills and understand why your utility charges different fees is a crucial step in maximizing a plant’s energy efficiency. Depending on your utility company, your bills can be a very long and detailed or quite short, with just a few totals listed. Different charges can appear each month with no apparent explanation of why or how they are calculated.
This webinar will help companies learn about and analyze their electric bills. Data collected from utility bills can be used with the DOE Energy Performance Indicator software tool to establish an energy baseline and track progress over time.
Download: Understanding Your Utility Bills: Electricity (PDF)
Download: Webinar Transcript
Download: Webinar Presentation
Understanding Your Natural Gas Bills
Learning to read your utility bills and understand why your utility charges different fees is critical in maximizing your cost savings through energy efficiency. Depending on your utility company, your bills can be very long and detailed or short, with just a few totals listed. Different charges can appear each month with no apparent explanation of why or how they are calculated.
This webinar will help companies learn about and analyze their natural gas bills. Data collected from utility bills can be used with DOE Energy Performance Indicator software tool to establish an energy baseline and track progress over time.
Download: Understanding Your Utility Bills: Natural Gas (PDF)
Download: Webinar Transcript
Download: Webinar Presentation
Understanding Your Water Bills
Learning to read your utility bills and understand why your utility charges different fees is critical in maximizing your cost savings through energy efficiency. Depending on your utility company, your bills can be very long and detailed or short, with just a few totals listed. Different charges can appear each month with no apparent explanation of why or how they are calculated.
This webinar will help companies learn about and analyze their water bills. Data collected from utility bills can be used with DOE Energy Performance Indicator software tool to establish an energy baseline and track progress over time.
Download: Understanding Your Utility Bills: Water (PDF)
Download: Webinar Transcript
Download: Webinar Presentation
Lessons Learned from Better Plants Goal Achievers
Since 2009, more than 250 U.S. manufacturers and industrial-scale energy-using organizations have established ambitious energy intensity reduction goals by joining DOE’s Better Plants program. Having an ambitious goal that is approved and communicated by senior management gives these companies a target to reach and helps focus their efforts towards improving energy efficiency.
However, setting an ambitious energy or sustainability goal can be a daunting proposition, particularly if personnel in such companies lack sufficient resources or a coherent plan to achieve it. This webinar showcases key lessons learned from Better Plants goal achievers.
Download: Trailblazers and Goal Achievers: How Better Plants Partners Achieved Ambitious Energy Goals (PDF)
Download: Webinar Transcript
Download: Webinar Presentation