Doing business in an eco-friendly, sustainable way and mastering the challenges of globalisation doesn’t have to be a contradiction. To meet the goals CeramTec has voluntarily set for itself with regard to the responsibility to protect the environment and pledge to operate the company sites sustainably, CeramTec recently had an energy efficiency analysis conducted at the Marktredwitz site. The objective is to increase the ability to compete in the global marketplace by minimising how much CeramTec spend on energy and thus reduce the production and infrastructure costs.
Together with GEON, CeramTec launched a project titled "Smart Energy" to identify potential areas where the ceramic experts can improve the energy efficiency at the CeramTec site in Marktredwitz. GEON has many years of experience in the energy industry and has successfully completed a number of optimization projects. The first module of the project was called "Instrumentation-based situation analysis for energy efficiency".
The energy efficiency analysis was performed over a six-month period from March to September 2013. GEON analysed a variety of data sets and took approximately 250 measurements to determine consumption levels. The company then took the results and made recommendations and offered suggestions for improvement. This also included reviewing contracts with energy companies and tax refund opportunities for the energy efficiency analysis. Moreover, the analysis presented the following options to reduce energy costs:
- Grid cost optimisation
- Energy purchase optimisation
- Peak load optimisation
- Consumption optimisation
- Energy monitoring
- Energy controlling
- Increasing energy efficiency
- Utilisation of renewable energies
- Trigeneration
In 2012 CeramTec’s energy consumption for production and infrastructure at the Marktredwitz site generated CO2 emissions totaling approximately 57,000 t/year. Initial results of the energy efficiency analysis suggest that it would be possible to lower CO2emissions by around 21,000 t/year, provided the full potential of all measures to increase energy efficiency is successfully tapped. The energy efficiency analysis was funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology from the "Program to Promote Energy Technologies and Energy Efficiency" (BayINVENT).
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