Realising Energy & Carbon Savings from ESOS Opportunities

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We are Pioneer Foods UK and produce breakfast cereals and healthy fruit snacks. We're the UK's leading cereal maker, providing own-label, branded manufacture and packaging services for many of the leading retailers and brands in the UK.As a successful and growing company we recognise the need to act responsibly, delivering high quality products to our customers whilst avoiding waste and minimising our environmental impact. This means we must manage all the resources we use as effectively and as efficiently as possible, from the natural ingredients that go into our cereals to the energy needed for mixing and baking them.The current climate emergency requires all of us to think about how we can reduce our carbon emissions. Policy responses include companies such as Pioneer Foods UK undertaking ESOS (Energy Savings Opportunities Scheme) Assessments -- a review of how we manage and use energy. The ESOS Report identifies the strengths and weaknesses of our approach to energy use, identifies energy drivers and identifies potential projects that will help us to reduce energy use, costs and carbon emissions.It is not mandatory to implement the projects identified in the ESOS Report, but it makes sense for any business to do so where the action will not only save money, but also reduce carbon emissions and contribute to our environmental goals. Our ESOS Report identified several opportunities which would reduce our energy use and realise significant carbon reductions if all of them could be implemented.As one might expect several of the projects involve improvements to our ovens and dryers, which are key to producing our cereals. These are very large items of plant involving many sub-systems including PLCs, gas burners, fans and conveyors. In addition, they require services such as steam and compressed air, which are provided by transforming gas and electricity. These transformations need to be as efficient as possible to reduce costs and carbon emissions. In this project we propose to carry out detailed feasibility studies of these transformations and our plant operation. The analysis and evaluation will inform us which of the opportunities can be realised, how much investment (finance and other resources) is required, identify any risks (especially to our process) and quantify the benefits in terms of monetary and carbon reductions.