AIM ECO’NEWS
The Miniwatt project is continuing across the group’s sites in order to achieve our objectives of reducing electricity and gas consumption by 10 % compared with the reference year 2019.
The actions and instructions implemented in recent months on lighting and heating are beginning to give results, with several sites being only a few quarters away from achieving their objectives.
Gas and electricity prices will continue to increase significantly over the next few years (having already jumped several tens of percent over the past two years). Moreover, the acceleration of climate change and the expectations of our customers are incentives for the group to include the Miniwatt project in a long-term and sustainable approach to support the growth of our sites.
To this end and to accelerate the deployment of the approach, a group investment plan jointly drawn up with each site in the first quarter defined a roadmap for the years ahead. An investment envelope of more than €600,000 is already planned for 2023. This plan comprises seven major components in the bid to reduce our energy consumption:
- LED and separate lighting
- Insulation of our energy-intensive processes
- Fatal heat recovery for our processes and/or heating
- Thermal insulation of buildings
- Performance of motors and rotating machinery
- Performance of heating and control systems
- Self-production of energy
- Electricity and gas metering and energy diagnostic plan
For the LED part, the final orders for STSM, IVA, METASEVAL, OTIMA, TDM and ADELMA will be placed in the second quarter of 2023. We expect to save 140,000 kWh/year as soon as they are implemented, the equivalent of 1 % of the group’s total electricity consumption for 2022.
Several sites are also currently studying improvements to their suction and ventilation systems and the performance of their motors and compressors, with several investments in progress or to come (Romaire, IVA).
The second part of the year will mainly focus on process insulation projects (IVA, METASEVLA), buildings (AIMM, METASEVAL) and heating control projects (OTIMA, IVA) to prepare for the winter of 2023-2024.
Finally, a sub-metering program will be deployed this year at the majority of our sites in order to analyze our consumption in more detail, offering better understanding of it, better monitoring of anomalies, and easier detection of potential sources of improvement.
In parallel with these investments, a number of other actions are due to be put into effect at each site. An action plan has been defined for each site with specific project leaders and site managers. These partnerships will remain in place to pilot and implement the actions that have been identified as necessary. In order to take advantage of the ideas of each site, a fortnightly update has been set up with all the group’s Miniwatt referentatives.
