WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched its Energy Saving Assessments program at six industrial plants in March, including a refinery in New Jersey; a tire plant and a steel mill in Tennessee; a Texas paper mill; and a paper mill and a printer in Wisconsin. Through its free energy assessments, DOE is working with major manufacturing facilities to identify energy-saving opportunities, primarily focusing on steam boiler systems and process heating systems.

DOE's Energy Saving Teams have completed visits to 29 large federal facilities and are in the process of visiting 200 U.S. manufacturing facilities as part of the national "Easy Ways to Save Energy" campaign launched in October 2005. The first nine Energy Saving Assessments have identified a total of $28 million per year in potential energy cost savings that could reduce natural gas consumption by more than 3 trillion Btu per year.

DOE's Energy Saving Teams were sent to the Valero Energy Corp.'s refinery in Paulsboro, N.J., where 184,000 barrels of petroleum products are produced each day; the Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Union City, Tenn.; the Bekaert Steel Wire Corp. facility in Dyersburg, Tenn., where steel wire products are manufactured; MeadWestvaco Corp.'s bleached paperboard facility in Evadale, Texas; SCA Tissue's de-inking and recycling tissue mill in Menasha, Wis., where 400,000 tons of wastepaper is converted into 240,000 tons of tissue each year; and the 1.5-million-square-foot Quad/Graphics plant in Sussex, Wis., where a number of popular magazines are printed.

Publication date: 03/13/2006