Developing a Decision Making Framework for Energy Efficiency Planning in Industry

Decision making techniques are gaining popularity in sustainable energy management. The techniques provide solutions to the problems involving conflicting and multiple objectives. Several methods based on weighted averages, priority setting, outranking, fuzzy principles and their combinations are employed for energy planning decisions. This paper presents a framework of a model that describes an industrial firm's energy efficiency planning decision making over time. Energy efficiency improvement is a key factor in reducing production cost when energy consumption mainly consists of electricity and fuels. The present framework is to support the decisions of the energy manager when establishes an energy management program. Key factors that influence this program are reneable obligations, environmental legislation and profitability. The primary areas for energy saving in industry are: electric motors, compressed air, steam, furnaces and heat recovery. The proposed framework could be a useful decision-support tool for energy directors in maximizing benefits from energy savinf solutions.