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Sustainable plants go mainstream
 New
Belgium Brewing Co. and other companies shift to sustainable manufacturing
and green products.
New Belgium Brewing Co., Fort Collins, CO, was green before green became cool.
The brewery appointed a sustainability expert in 2002. In 2006,
the company raised the position to boardroom status, placing the
company's former chief financial officer and chief operating
officer in the role of sustainability director.
At first, the effort to go green was an expense—the price
the company was willing to pay to elevate its position among employees
and customers. In the last few years of energy spikes, the effort
toward sustainability comes with a return-on-investment (ROI). The
payoff for sustainability is in dollars now," says Jenn Orgolini,
sustainability director at New Belgium Brewing. "It took a
long time for the ROI, but the payoff is there."
Like many plants, the brewery first turned to the usual culprits
of heating and cooling to cut energy use. "We purchase equipment
that has high heat and cooling efficiencies," says Orgolini.
"We use green building practices, super-efficient equipment,
efficient lighting and a heating, ventilation and air conditioning
(HVAC) system that doesn't use a compressor or Freon."
The company took this effort further by converting the brewing
waste into energy-producing methane. "We burn our waste in
a co-generator that turns a turbine to create electricity,"
says Orgolini. "Thirty percent of our electricity now comes
from burning methane from our waste." The brewery is also using
software to identify and eliminate energy waste.
Sustainable manufacturing has become a big concern at many plants.
The initial interest in good corporate citizenship has given way
to the reality that green makes good economic sense. "The energy
spike has been like an electric shock to the manufacturing community,"
says Stephen Stokes, vice president of Climate Change Business,
AMR Research Inc., in Boston. "Now, companies are trying to
provide the greenest product and the greenest manufacturing."
Green turns gold
Even as companies turn to sustainable practices to trim energy
costs, the goal of good corporate citizenship remains important.
Companies know their customers want clean products and they want
those products produced in an environmentally responsible manner.
These dual pressures to cut costs and meet the market's desire
for environmentally friendly processes and products has changed
behavior in the plant control room. High energy costs and customer
demand has turned green into gold.
One of the factors prompting companies toward sustainability is
the coming pressure from utility companies that, worldwide, are
starting to penalize plants that put excessive pressure on the power
grid. "Utility companies across the country and world are monitoring
power, and they're assessing big penalties on companies that
are putting a poor power factor on the grid," says Joel Shapiro,
group manager for industrial measurement and control, National Instruments
Corp., an Austin, TX automation vendor. "The vast majority
of buildings around the world will be mandated to improve their
power factor or get strict fines from the utility.”
Another motivator is simply cost. Rising energy costs are making
most chief executives believers is the virtue of green. "Mostly,
manufacturers are going green because they see the benefit in total
cost of ownership,"says Dan Throne, marketing manager at Bosch
Rexroth Corp.'s Electric Drives & Controls Division, in
Hoffman Estates, IL. "Energy is one third of the cost of plant
operations, so they're turning to energy conservation to save
money."
Whether the motivation is avoidance of utility penalties, corporate
citizenship or raw reduction in cost, sustainability has become
top-of-mind among executives. "As I go to different conferences,
sustainability is definitely one of the hot topics of the day,"
says Craig Resnick, research director at ARC Advisory Group Inc.,
Dedham, MA. "As for motivation, a lot of it is that they want
to be good corporate citizens. But if there's a cost reason
to go green, they're especially interested."
Adapted from the November '08 issue of Automation World,
p.40, written by Rob Spiegel. Read
the complete article. |
