D-CREE
| The vision: | Make energy efficiency more efficient. |
Some 75% of processing-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from electricity use, 23% from fuel use and 2% from refrigerant leakage.1 Sharing best practices can help reduce energy use, emissions and operating costs, improve system reliability, avoid maintenance and shut-down costs, increase productivity and add new revenue streams. The biggest challenges to implementation are limited resources and a lack of information.
The purpose of D-CREE, or Dairy Processor Carbon Reduction through Energy Efficiency, is to set benchmarks, provide modeling tools and case studies to help processing plants implement energy efficiency best practices. Even small changes to lighting, compressor, or boiler systems can result in sizable cost savings and have a big impact on GHG emissions. Installation of solar thermal and hot water recovery equipment at one case study processing plant will result in 18-20 years of free energy after an 8 year payback period.
| The bottom line: |
$45-50 million in energy cost savings annually assuming 80% adoption of best practices industry-wide. 8% reduction in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) annually by 2020. |
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1. University of Arkansas. Processor Survey, 2008. (Preliminary results). Survey data was collected from a total of 50 fluid milk processing plants, which collectively represent 12 percent of all U.S. milk plants. Processing sites surveyed consumed a combined total of 530 million kWh and 1.75 million MMBTUs to process fluid milk.
