DOE Conducts Energy Assessments in Alabama, Maine, and Utah

May 16, 2006

DOE launched industrial Energy Saving Assessments in mid-May at two plants in Alabama, as well as plants in Maine and Utah. The Dixie Group facility in Atmore, Alabama, tufts, dyes, and coats carpet for residential, contract, and custom markets. Wise Alloys in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, produces 950 million pounds per year of aluminum sheet products used in the beverage and food industries. The facility also melts and prepares 500 million pounds of scrap cans for recycling per year. Sappi Fine Paper's Somerset Mill in Skowhegan, Maine, has three paper machines that annually produce 760,000 tons of high-gloss, coated papers used in high-end catalogs and magazines. The plant also produces its own bleached chemical pulp. The Holcim, U.S. facility in Morgan, Utah, is one of the leading manufacturers of cement and mineral components in the United States. DOE's free three-day energy assessments are helping major manufacturing facilities to identify energy-saving opportunities, primarily by focusing on steam and process heating systems used at the plants. See the DOE press releases on the visits to Atmore, Muscle Shoals, Skowhegan, and Morgan, as well as the Wise Alloys and Sappi Fine Paper Web sites.

DOE's Energy Saving Teams have completed visits to 33 large federal facilities and are in the process of visiting 200 energy-intensive manufacturing facilities as part of the national "Easy Ways to Save Energy" campaign launched in October 2005. The first 44 industrial Energy Saving Assessments have identified a total of $149.3 million per year in potential energy cost savings. If implemented, these energy-saving measures could reduce natural gas consumption by more than 14.8 trillion Btu per year, which is more than the amount used by 200,000 U.S. homes. See the results of many of these industrial Energy Saving Assessments on the "Save Energy Now" Web site, provided by DOE's Industrial Technologies Program.