Resource Efficiency

Decarbonization of industry is gaining in significance. While increasing energy efficiency and decreasing process-related emissions are well-established approaches showing significant effects, integrating electricity from variable renewable sources with (often abundant) commercial energy flexibility is widely overlooked in practice. Flexible electricity tariffs are a crucial component to close this gap, allowing for an economically attractive use of flexibility potential by industrial enterprises and electricity providers. In this article, we examine three core models of flexible electricity tariffs regarding their practical applications.

Profit is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for long-term business success. Global problems such as climate change, depletion of natural resources and overpopulation, but also local environmental pollution and emphasis on social aspects increase the significance of sustainability for enterprises. Sustainability is already implemented in the guiding principles of all DAX 30 enterprises and accepted as maxim of action by 90 % of Fortune 500 enterprises [1]. Starting from a definition of sustainability, the subsequent contribution discusses sustainability effects of industry 4.0 concerning the economic, ecologic, and social dimension [2].

The future energy concept from the German federal government declares that by 2050, the primary energy requirement should be reduced to 80 %. Achieving this goal requires many local implementations. At teaching and research facilities, a large number of rooms and other spaces are used temporarily. That use usually happens over a predetermined period. The observance of the specific usage period of teaching rooms, in particular of internal teaching rooms, was used to design and implement a future-oriented energy concept for a lecture room. The concept was created to show how technical building services could be used. This work describes our concept’s principle, methodology, and implementation. This concept can also be used for energy optimization in other teaching rooms.

The Green Factory Bavaria is a research project, in which a platform at several locations in Bavaria is developed, in order to increase the resource efficiency in manufacturing companies. The platform shall serve as research-, demonstration- and training purposes. In Augsburg a process chain was developed, which consists of an additive manufacturing step, a cleaning and a packaging step. The research foci of those areas as well as the training concept are going to be presented in this article.

The economic benefits of photovoltaic systems under Germany’s current legislative conditions (EEG 2017) were investigated in two small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The energy demand of the case SMEs is very distinct in volume, type, and profile. With the aid of a simulation, direct consumption of expected renewable energy generation and resulting energy exchange with the grid were calculated. The results were analysed from an economic viewpoint using economic indicators.

This article deals with the presentation of a concept that shows new possibilities for a holistic improvement in the company’s internal resource efficiency by using Industry 4.0. Subsequently, the structure of a resource management system will be shown. To attain a holistic improvement of the resource efficiency, the viewing frame will be extended to the whole product lifecycle to show which potentials a coupling along the entire value-added chain provides.

The amount of resource efforts prevails with 46 % all other cost factors within classic manufacturing structures. Focusing on energy and labor costs as a source of raising companies profit seems no longer useful. Today, material costs of the manufacturing industry are about 500 billion euro per year, connected with a saving potential about approx. 100 billion euro. Also the belonging for sustainably produced products is still raising and is becoming a factor for a guaranteed purchase. Small and medium-sized enterprises fitted attempt, which helps increasing the transparency of internal processes and allows a resource driven ecological and economical assessment, is the main subject of this article.

The product-intensive production in all sectors of industry produces the desire for a particularly efficient form of energy conversion, since both electricity and useful heat are produced. To work concurrently environmentally friendly and energy efficient, the use of heat and power coupling for the process of heat generation is useful. The CHP shifts the electricity generation by the decentralization of generation plants to places with continuous heat demand. In the long term the increased use of CHP-units in the industry leads to a reduction of CO2 emissions, protects the environment and reduces energy costs.

External stakeholders’ requirements towards the environmental performance of manufacturing companies have increased the importance of eco-efficient process design. A key prerequisite to select and implement appropriate improvement measures is an integrated environmental and economic performance (eco-efficiency) assessment. This paper presents three approaches to estimate the associated costs of the environmental impact caused by internal processes and therefore provides decision support for eco-efficiency improvements in the domain of manufacturing.