USA: Titan America's Roanoke Cement has earned the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Energy Star certification for the tenth consecutive year and Titan's Pennsuco plant celebrates nine years of certification. To qualify for Energy Star, Titan's plants must perform in the top 25 percent of cement plants in the US for total energy efficiency (thermal and electrical) and meet strict environmental performance levels set by the EPA.
To further its efforts, Titan America has implemented a series of processes that enable Titan employees to maintain and improve energy performance across the entire enterprise. The Titan Energy Management System (EnMS), operating at Titan's three largest facilities (the Roanoke Cement plant in Virginia and both the cement plant and aggregate plant located in Medley, Florida) enables employees to systematically manage total consumption of all energy sources. This program, which addresses the energy performance standard ISO 50001, also ensures that the company's business operations are as efficient as possible, increases plant reliability and supports Titan's operational goals.
"At Titan America we are passionate about continuously developing efficient, sustainable operating practices," said Bill Zarkalis, Titan America's CEO. "Titan's EnMS program is an excellent example of innovation and of our commitment to make our business operations more efficient, while contributing as much as we can to make the locations in which we operate better places to live and work. We are very proud of this recognition, but we do not take it for granted. We are poised to continue our efforts."
"We are extremely proud of the Energy Star certifications we have earned over the past decade," commented George Pantazopoulos, Senior Vice President of Titan America Cement Operations and Corporate Engineering. "We also consider this milestone to be a catalyst for reinvigorating our teams and increasing our efforts. We have no doubt that we can gain further efficiencies in our manufacturing processes using the EnMS program."
Roanoke Cement has applied electricity management best practices during the previous 18 months and has delivered an 11% reduction in electricity consumed per tonne of cement produced. Additionally, the company has partnered with electrical utilities to reduce their contribution to peaks on the power grid due to demand management and demand response. These efforts ensure that inefficient peak generators owned by the utilities can remain offline during times when homeowners and businesses place a large demand on the electrical grid.
"The EnMS program is scheduled to be fully operational by 3Q 2017," reported Chris Bayne, Titan America's Corporate Energy Manager and director of the EnMS program. "We organised teams to oversee the program at our three main facilities. Roberto Duran will lead the Pennsuco Aggregates Plant team, Sonny Cruz will lead the Roanoke Cement Plant team and Diwakar Mishra will lead the team at Pennsuco Cement." Bayne also noted that the implementation teams would routinely incorporate energy management practices into the daily operations of Titan's manufacturing facilities. Titan is targeting a reduction in total energy consumption of 3%, year-over-year.
Energy Star was introduced by EPA in 1992 as a voluntary, market-based partnership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency. Today, the Energy Star label can be found on more than 60 different kinds of products as well as new homes and commercial and industrial buildings that meet strict energy-efficiency specifications set by the EPA. Over the past twenty years, American families and businesses have saved a total of nearly $230 billion on utility bills and prevented more than 1.7 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions with help from Energy Star.
