Barriers to industrial energy efficiency in foundries: a European comparison

TLDR: In this article, the authors investigated the barriers to energy efficiency at 65 foundries, several of them small and medium-sized enterprises, highlighting the critical problems and difficulties by evaluating the socio-technical frameworks against which the barriers have been categorized.

About: This article is published in Journal of Cleaner Production.The article was published on 2013-02-01 and is currently open access. It has received 213 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Primary energy & Efficient energy use.

Figures

Table IV. Perceived barriers – total sample – average score and frequency of responses.

Table VIII. Perceived barriers – by alloy.

Figure 4. Perceived barriers – by Countries – frequency of responses

Table III. Description of the sample by Firm’s size vs Alloy, Audit and Country.

Table VI. Perceived barriers – by firm’s size

Table I. Barriers to energy efficiency: the Sorrell et al. taxonomy (Sorrell et al., 2000).

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Barriers to industrial energy efficiency in foundries: a european comparison" ?

This study therefore addresses barriers within the European foundry industry, a major industrial energy user and a strategic player for the European economy. The study has also performed a preliminary analysis of the factors that might affect the perception of barriers. The study has also highlighted differences by type of alloy characterizing foundries, taken as proxy of the process complexity. This result seems to be relevant since it shows the need for the research to analyse the awareness to energy efficiency in greater depth and develop the most effective policies to increase it at industrial level. Moreover, the study opens to investigate which means, i. e. drivers, might be more effectively exploited at European level to promote industrial energy efficiency. 

Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "Barriers to industrial energy efficiency in foundries: a european comparison" ?

In particular, several differences can be identified in an organizational perspective, with small enterprises suffering for example a lack of specific personnel dedicated to researching energy efficiency and opportunities, calling for future research in this field. Nonetheless, since the sample is limited and not representative of the whole population of foundries, future research on this topic might explore more deeply the differences in the technologies adopted and try to perform an analysis of the barriers according to process-specific energy-efficient technologies. In addition to that, since the study has been conducted investigating barriers to energy efficiency in general, it seems important to extend the investigation to the barriers hindering the adoption to technologies specifically developed for foundries. A factor that could be deeper explored by future research, since it has shown to have a relevant impact on barriers to energy efficiency, is the energy audit. 

Q3. How many enterprises consider the lack of influence of the energy manager as a not or fairly relevant?

In addition to that, only 6% of Cast Iron enterprises consider this issue as not relevant, compared with a share of 13% and even 21% respectively for Aluminium and Cast Steel ones. 

Q4. How many enterprises considered technical risks as not or fairly relevant?

only 12% of the Cast Iron enterprises considered technical risks as a not or fairly relevant issue, compared with 21% of Cast Steel ones. 

Q5. How many enterprises have reported the hidden costs as a relevant issue?

Cost of staff replacement, retirement and retraining, that has reported an averagescore of 2.95, with only 6% of enterprises declaring it as absolutely relevant. 

Q6. How many SEs have considered accessing capital as a relevant issue?

if considering the Lack of technical skills barrier, in SEs all enterprises have considered it to be at least a relevant issue, with values almost equally distributed across scores 3, 4 and 5; nonetheless, when looking at LEs, only 13% of them have declared it to be an absolutely relevant issue, whilst about one third have considered it as fairly relevant. 

Q7. How many enterprises judge the lack of influence of the energy manager as a not or fairly relevant?

As from the analysis of frequencies, the low priority of energy management is judged as a not or fairly relevant issue by only 12% of Cast Iron enterprises, in comparison with43% of Cast Steel ones. 

Q8. How many enterprises judge the lack of influence by the energy manager as an issue?

Perceived barriers – by AlloyIndeed, as reported by the analysis of frequencies (Figure 2), if about 70% of the Cast Iron enterprises have judged the lack of influence by the energy manager as an at least quite relevant issue, this share decreases to 50% and 47% respectively for Cast Steel and Aluminium enterprises. 

Q9. What is the main reason for the lack of competitiveness in the European industry?

As a consequence, this lack of competitiveness is driving the attention of European enterprises towards energy efficiency, since it is recognized as a primary path for their survival. 

Q10. How many SEs considered access to capital as a relevant issue?

This has been confirmed also by the analysis of frequencies, where half of the SEs considered access to capital as an absolutely relevant issue, compared with only a 13% of LEs.