The Superior Energy Performance™ (SEP) program administered through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was named a finalist for the Green Electronics Council’s 2016 Catalyst Award. This prestigious global competition honors creative solutions for the greening of electronics—an initiative that has already helped the industry aggressively shrink its carbon footprint—particularly in the customer end-use phase. SEP focuses sustainability efforts on the similarly important manufacturing stage of the electronics supply chain.

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This recognition underscores the potential for Superior Energy Performance and the global ISO 50001 energy management system standard to support further advancements in an industry already working diligently on sustainability. Supply chains can be complex, but production process improvements offer major opportunities to reduce a product’s carbon footprint.

SEP helps to boost energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the electronics supply chain. Many sustainability efforts focus on product end use or recyclability, but production can account for 80% or more of a product’s GHG emissions. Electronic product OEMs can help their suppliers discover SEP and find new ways to continually improve manufacturing energy performance. See the infographic on SEP’s value to the electronics sector.

SEP certification emphasizes measurable energy savings through ISO 50001 in a transparent process. An independent third party audits each facility to verify achievements and qualify it for recognition at the Silver, Gold, or Platinum level, based on the percentage of energy performance improvement. To date, SEP-certified plants have improved energy performance up to 30% over three years. Results to date:

• Annual savings of $36,000 to $938,000 using no-cost or low-cost operational measures
• 12% reduction in energy costs within 15 months of SEP implementation (on average)
• 5.7% to 30.6% improvement in energy performance over three years
• Paybacks of less than 1.5 years (in facilities with energy costs above $2 million annually).

Superior Energy Performance is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) administered certification program that provides guidance, tools, and protocols for any facilities that wish to gain deeper, more sustained savings from the ISO 50001 standard. 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. Industry members of the U.S. Council for Energy Efficient Manufacturing worked with DOE, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board to develop SEP as a transparent system for certifying improvements in energy performance and management practices.