<em>Photo courtesy of Volvo Group Trucks</em>

AMO is pleased to announce that the Volvo Group Trucks facility in Hagerstown, Maryland, has become the third facility within the Volvo Group to be certified to the Superior Energy Performance® (SEP™) program and to ISO 50001. The facility improved its energy performance by 20.9% over three years to achieve SEP certification at the Platinum level.

The Hagerstown facility joins two other Volvo Group Truck facilities at the very top of the Platinum category for SEP certification. The company’s Dublin, VA, facility improved its energy performance by 25.8% over three years to earn SEP certification in 2012. The following year, Mack Trucks, also part of the Volvo Group, achieved a 41.9% improvement over ten years at its facility in Macungie, PA. To date, these three facilities top the list of SEP certified facilities, posting the highest energy performance improvements at the Platinum level.

“Just earning the SEP certification is no small achievement, so you can imagine how pleased we are to hold the top three spots in the highest category. The strength of our energy performance shows what you can achieve with a skilled and dedicated staff supported by a committed management team,” said Rick Robinson, Volvo Group Director of Health, Safety, and Environment. “The best part is that these plants now have a rigorous energy management system that will sustain these energy savings and continue strengthening plant energy performance in the years ahead.”

To qualify for SEP, the facility set up a robust energy management system, tracked the improvements in its energy performance, and had the results independently verified by an accredited SEP Verification Body. Certification to the ISO 50001 standard for energy management systems is an integral part of the SEP certification process. 

Superior Energy Performance® is a DOE-administered certification program that provides guidance, tools, and protocols for facilities that want to achieve deeper, more sustained savings from ISO 50001. SEP also complements and supports the industrial part of DOE's Better Buildings Initiative by verifying facility-level energy performance improvements and savings achieved by participants in the Better Buildings, Better Plants program. Members of the U.S. Council for Energy Efficient Manufacturing, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board developed SEP as a transparent system for certifying sustained improvements in energy performance and management practices.