Federal Minister Michael Glos today presented three innovative companies with the international Energy Efficiency Award for exemplary projects to increase energy efficiency. Entries to the competition were invited by the Deutsche Energie-Agentur (dena) - the German Energy Agency - in cooperation with Deutsche Messe under the scope of the EnergieEffizienz Initiative and the prizewinners announced during the World Energy Dialogue.

One of the companies, Weidmüller Interface GmbH & Co. KG, has shown that it most definitely gives energy efficiency top priority, both now and in the long term. The company was able to achieve considerable energy and cost savings by replacing electric heat with heat from a highly efficient cogeneration unit and rigorous heat recovery. This won the jury’s admiration: In only four months the investment in the energy efficiency measures had paid off, with a remarkable return on investment of 300 percent.

Paderborner Brauerei Haus Cramer was praised for its systematic optimization of the energy required for the compressed air systems in the brewery. The measures included the combination of two completely separate networks, and resulted in a 50 percent reduction in the amount of electricity used by the system. The example given by the Paderborn brewery illustrates that a well-planned increase in energy efficiency can also result in considerable cost advantages for medium-sized enterprises.

METRO Group Asset Management’s package of measures has allowed it to implement a successful energy concept for its ventilation and air conditioning systems. Innovative solutions such as visitor-counting mechanisms to regulate ventilation resulted in considerable savings: 800,000 kWh in electricity and 1.7 million kWh in district heating.

The international Energy Efficiency Award highlights just how cost effective energy efficiency projects can be in trade and industry and demonstrates their feasibility. It is hoped that other companies will be motivated to follow the example set by the energy efficiency pioneers who received the award. For more online information please go to industrie-energieeffizienz.de.
The Energy Efficiency Award is organized as part of the EnergieEffizienz Initative, a platform for action for the efficient use of electricity in all consumer sectors which is supported by dena and the energy companies E.ON, EnBW, RWE and Vattenfall Europe. It is sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology (BMWi).