DOE Conducts Energy Assessments in Texas and Indiana

August 29, 2006

DOE announced on August 29th that it is conducting three-day Industrial Energy Saving Assessments at the Lone Star Steel facility in Lone Star, Texas, and at U.S. Steel's Gary Works facility in Gary, Indiana. Lone Star Steel produces steel tubes and pipes for energy, industrial, and automotive applications. The Gary Works facility operates facilities for steelmaking and finishing, and the plant has an annual raw steelmaking capacity of 7.5 million tons. 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 Lone Star assessment and on the Gary assessment, as well as the Web sites for Lone Star Steel and U.S. Steel's Gary Works facility.

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 113 industrial Energy Saving Assessments have identified a total of $282 million per year in potential energy cost savings. If implemented, these energy-saving measures could reduce natural gas consumption by more than 31 trillion Btu per year, which is more than the amount used by 430,000 U.S. homes. The results of many of these industrial Energy Saving Assessments are now available on the "Save Energy Now" Web site, provided by DOE's Industrial Technologies Program. See the "Easy Ways to Save Energy" Web site.