Barriers to industrial energy efficiency in foundries: a European comparison
Barriers to industrial energy efficiency in foundries: a European comparison
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.08.040
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发表时间：
2013-02
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
A. Trianni;E. Cagno;P. Thollander;Sandra Backlund
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Trianni;E. Cagno;P. Thollander;Sandra Backlund
根据最近的研究，欧洲能源效率提高20%，即使采用目前的政策来减少一次能源的使用，以目前的趋势也无法实现。这是由于存在一些障碍，阻碍了采用节能技术和做法。工业部门可对提高能源效率作出相关贡献，因为工业部门与能源使用总量相关。因此，这项研究解决了欧洲铸造业的障碍，这是一个主要的工业能源用户和欧洲经济的战略参与者。该研究调查了65家铸造厂的能源效率障碍，其中一些是中小型企业（SMEs），通过评估障碍分类的社会技术框架，突出了关键问题和困难。调查结果表明，最大的障碍是缺乏资源的看法，专门用于提高能源效率，以及存在其他优先事项，如保证业务连续性的重要性。研究还对可能影响障碍感知的因素进行了初步分析。特别是，从规模来看，小企业比大企业更能感受到这些障碍，这主要是由于一些组织问题，但对行为问题产生影响，这些问题往往将能源效率降低到一个次要问题。该研究还强调了不同类型的合金表征铸造厂的差异，作为工艺复杂性的代表。事实上，生产流程较简单的企业往往认为提高能源效率的障碍较高，这表明需要找到有效的手段，在这些企业中提高能源效率。此外，分析指出，进行能源审计带来了更多的认识，企业，突出了有效提高能源效率的现有困难。这一结果似乎是相关的，因为它表明，研究需要更深入地分析能源效率的认识，并制定最有效的政策，以提高工业一级的能源效率。最后，当观察铸造厂运营的国家时，德国企业往往遭受的壁垒远远低于平均水平，而瑞典企业则完全不同。这些初步调查结果使研究得以更深入地调查导致对障碍的不同看法的因素，以及导致这些结果的国内政策。此外，该研究还探讨了在欧洲层面上，哪些手段（即驱动因素）可能更有效地被利用来促进工业能源效率。
According to recent studies, the 20% European improvement in energy efficiency will not be achieved with current trends, even with the adoption of present policies to reduce primary energy use. This is due to the existence of several barriers that hinder the adoption of the energy-efficient technologies and practices. A relevant contribution to improved energy efficiency could come from the industrial sector, due to its relevance on total energy use. This study therefore addresses barriers within the European foundry industry, a major industrial energy user and a strategic player for the European economy. The research investigates the barriers to energy efficiency at 65 foundries, several of them small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), highlighting the critical problems and difficulties by evaluating the socio-technical frameworks against which the barriers have been categorized. Findings show that the greatest perceived barriers are the perception of the lack of resources to be devoted to improving energy efficiency, and the existence of other priorities such as the importance of guaranteeing business continuity. The study has also performed a preliminary analysis of the factors that might affect the perception of barriers. In particular, looking at size, smaller enterprises show a greater perception of the barriers than larger ones, mainly due to several organizational issues, but with effect on behavioural ones, that tend to downgrade energy efficiency to a peripheral issue. The study has also highlighted differences by type of alloy characterizing foundries, taken as proxy of the process complexity. Indeed, enterprises with simpler production processes tend to perceive higher barriers to energy efficiency, showing the need to identify effective means to promote energy efficiency among those enterprises. Moreover, the analysis has pointed out that performing energy audits brings more awareness to the enterprises, highlighting the effective existing difficulties in improving their energy efficiency. This result seems to be relevant since it shows the need for the research to analyze the awareness to energy efficiency in greater depth and develop the most effective policies to increase it at industrial level. Finally when looking at the country in which foundries operate, German enterprises tend to suffer from the barriers far less than the average, whilst a totally different behaviour can be observed for Swedish ones. These preliminary findings open the research to investigate in greater depth the factors leading to a different perception of barriers, and also the domestic policies that have led to those results. Moreover, the study opens to investigate which means, i.e. drivers, might be more effectively exploited at European level to promote industrial energy efficiency.