Improving Energy Efficiency in Industrial Solutions – Walk the Talk

This paper describes the outline of the energy efficiency and environmental care policy and management at Siemens Industry Solutions Division. This environmental policy coherently embraces strategic planning, eco-design of energy-efficient industrial processes and solutions, design evaluation and finally communication of both environmental and economic performance of solutions to customers. One of the main tools supporting eco-design and evaluation & controlling of derived design solutions is the so called “Eco-Care-Matrix” (ECM). The ECM simply visualizes the eco-efficiency of solutions compared to a given baseline. In order to prevent from “green washing” criticism and to ensure “walk the talk” attitude the ECM should be scientifically well-founded using appropriate and consistent methodology. The vertical axis of an ECM illustrates the environmental performance and the horizontal axis describes the economical customer benefit of one or more green solutions compared to a defined reference solution. Different scientific approaches for quantifying the environmental performance based on life cycle assessment methodology are discussed especially considering the ISO standards 14040/14044:2006. Appropriate ECM application is illustrated using the example of the Siemens MEROS® technology (Maximized Emission Reduction of Sintering) for the steel industry. MEROS® is currently the most modern and powerful system for cleaning off-gas in sinter plants. As an environmental technology MEROS® is binding and removing sulfur dioxide and other acidic gas components present in the off-gas stream by using dry absorbents and additional electrical power. Advantage in the impact category of acidification potential (by desulfurization) is a trade-off to disadvantages in global warming and resource depletion potential caused by use of electricity. Representing different impacts, indicator results for impact categories with different tendencies have to be compared category by category and therefore should not be aggregated to a single-score result. Results communicated in the form of a self-declared environmental claim (type II environmental labeling, ISO 14021) for MEROS® are presented