Canada: Community leaders and St Marys Cement Inc. executives were on hand on 29 May 2014 to celebrate the company's Bowmanville plant receiving the Gold Award Certification in Energy Excellence. Certification in Energy Excellence is a programme that tests an organisation's energy management processes. Over 160 energy management criteria, based on world-class best practices, are assessed. The programme is independently moderated and validated by the UK's National Energy Foundation.

The Bowmanville plant was recognised for its energy conservation performance and its success at energy management. To date, the plant's approach to energy management has saved US$10m. In 2014 it is on target to again reduce its energy bill by US$1m. These savings are achieved though an integrated and balanced approach of smart energy buying, matching energy-intensive plant operations with off-peak rates, common sense energy conservation practices and other plant-based energy initiatives.

John Pooley, Chief Assessor for the Certification in Energy Excellence, presented the plant with the award. "The Bowmanville facility is one of the largest cement plants in North America with a rated capacity of over 1.8Mt/yr," said Pooley. "Cement plants consume significant amounts of energy, but few other industrial operations in the world have come close to achieving the same level of integration in energy savings."

Marty Fallon, CEO of St Marys Cement, Celso Martini, VP Cement Operations, and Fabio Garcia, Manager of Plant Operations, accepted the award on behalf of St Marys. "St Marys is extremely proud of the effort, ingenuity and technical expertise deployed by the men and women working here to achieve the direct savings and establish systems to keep our energy purchase prices as low as possible," said Fallon. "The energy reductions at this plant are getting more and more attention as a benchmark in sustainability criteria for the entire sector. In fact, in 2015 the plant will be the featured site visit during the 2015 IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference."

The Bowmanville plant manager Fabio Garcia said, "I want to especially commend the energy management and conservation committee, which we call E=MC2. With representatives from finance, human resources, environment, quality control, maintenance, mining and production departments, the committee identified and acted upon over 100 separate energy efficiency initiatives. The magic of the E=MC2 approach was many of the energy savings required little capital expenditure or were done at no cost."

Since the E=MC2 committee's inception, the plant has reduced its energy usage by a total of 171,429MW and has lowered CO2 emissions by 31,886t.