How the Better Plants Program is Better for Your Business

Sustainability is good for business – in more ways than one. For one thing, companies are increasingly expected to be participating and initiating sustainability initiatives – for the simple reason that it’s the right thing to do for everyone involved. And done right, sustainable practices can generate some hard ROI, including saving money.  That’s where the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Better Plants Program can help.

The Better Plants Program is a voluntary partnership initiative between the DOE and participating companies, designed to drive significant energy efficiency improvement and cost reductions. Each year, manufacturers spend approximately $200 billion on energy to operate their plants, and DOE data shows that there are big opportunities to reduce energy use. To date, the DOE has helped plants do exactly that, avoiding a cumulative $8.2 billion in energy expenses.

There are four areas where the Better Plants Program can help:

1. Increased energy productivity
2. Water savings
3. Waste reduction
4. Carbon reduction

Partnering companies will be joining more than 250 others – representing 12 percent of the U.S. manufacturing footprint – that are improving their competitiveness, driving energy efficiency, and saving money through these sustainability efforts.

“We ask corporate partners to set an aggressive energy goal and in return, we want to help partners succeed on that journey,” said Thomas Wenning, Program Manager for Industrial Energy Efficiency at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “If you fulfill that one side of the coin, we are here to help.”

VI member OxyChem is one company whose found success participating. Sean Stephan, Director of Sustainability at OxyChem, was familiar with the program, having led the partnership at a previous employer. And when considering OxyChem’s sustainability strategy, committing to the Better Plants Program seemed like another logical step toward achieving their bold goals.

OxyChem started by implementing the Better Plants Program at one of their Ingleside, Texas, manufacturing facility three years ago, and just completed the pilot recently. “We’re still validating the data, but early indications suggest enough improvement that we are pressing ahead and expand this program into our OxyChem plants,” Stephan said.

Now, they’ve set several goals with DOE to reduce their energy consumption and emissions. Their collaboration in the Better Plants Program is just one initiative they’re undertaking to reach their 2025 mid-term targets. And as many chemical industry members of the Vinyl Institute have done, OxyChem has also signed a DOE charter to reduce their energy consumption 20% over the next 10 years.

But what about cost? Well, that may be the best part – it’s entirely free to participate in, and you receive a dedicated technical account manager that is there to help companies determine their progress and challenges and how they can help them succeed. “Having worked with the DOE and Better Plants Program several times in my career, I have always been connected with some of the best engineering experts that are there to help guide us,” Stephan said.

Is it too good to be true? Nope. “The DOE is not successful unless the U.S. industrial base is successful,” Wenning said. “We want to help.”