The Evolution of the Role of the Energy Consultant (EGE)
Energy efficiency
In a highly automated production system, energy becomes crucial for industry competitiveness. This is further accelerated by European policies to combat climate change, demanding continuous energy efficiency improvement and encouraging renewable energy production. Energy thus becomes a strategic element impacting various business functions. From facility operations and business competitiveness elements to marketing strategy, each must now address unprecedented questions:
- Business: What is the energy cost per unit? Percentage of independence from the energy market?
- Facility: What is the operational efficiency of the facilities? What is the impact of energy losses? What is the efficiency and performance of energy production facilities?
- Marketing: What is the environmental impact per unit? What is the overall environmental impact of the industry?
If past energy efficiency interventions and environmental impact reductions were sporadic, they now must be anticipated within a broader corporate energy strategy that involves adopting resources and tools capable of operating and interacting on a systemic level.
The approach to energy resources used in industrial processes drives the evolution of the energy consultant role (EGE). On one hand, this figure gains significant and strategic importance for industries; on the other, it must adopt new tools that are more easily integrated into the new systemic strategy for managing energy resources within industrial plans.
This is why Cloud IoT platforms become an essential and indispensable element for industrial energy management, allowing the energy consulting work to be carried out in a more integrated and systemic manner within business processes. Activities that were previously performed occasionally are now required continuously and in the immediate availability of systems and business functions:
- Mapping processes from an energy consumption viewpoint;
- Identifying points of greatest inefficiency;
- Identifying mitigating or resolving actions;
- Estimating an investment budget;
- Drafting an executive roadmap;
- Executing the roadmap;
- Verifying intervention KPIs.
These are the challenges that current industries are called to address.
