In Hunt For Energy Savings, GE Woos Clients

15 january 2013

On a hot Sunday afternoon in August, 22 employees from several units of General Electric gathered in St. Johnsbury, Vermont with key employees of manufacturer Weidmann Electrical Technology at a Weidmann factory there. Their mission was to embark on what GE calls an “energy treasure hunt.” Over the course of two and a half days, the group unearthed a potential $679,000 in annual energy and water savings for the Weidmann factory – at a plant that spends $4 million a year on oil and electricity combined. The cost of this investigation to Weidmann? Only its employees’ time.

The benefit to GE? Customer retention. This, at a time when GE Capital needs to hold on to its best customers. GE Capital Corp. posted a $223 million loss in the quarter ended  Sept. 30  on revenues of $11.6 billion. The loss included a $1.1 billion charge on discontinued operations.

Weidmann had turned to GE Capital to help it finance a revamp of an abandoned printing plant in Urbana, Ohio. GE Capital aimed to sweeten its financing deal with a freebie that in turn could help lower Weidmann’s cost of doing business. “It revealed energy consumption that we weren’t as aware of as we should have been,” says John Goodrich, vice president of operations at Weidmann Electrical Technology. “They were great. The whole thing flowed very well.”

Closely examining energy usage is a growing trend among U.S. and multinational companies, which are looking to cut costs wherever possible. But many large companies, especially those with multiple locations, still don’t fully comprehend their energy spending. Chris Curtis, chief executive of Schneider Electric North America, which has a large energy efficiency business, says the first thing he asks CEOs he meets is whether they know their company’s energy bill. “Six out of 10 say they don’t,” says Curtis.

Morgan Stanley is one firm that keeps close tabs on its global energy usage. This past August, it hired a San Bruno, Calif. company called ENXSuite to track its carbon footprint across its 1,300 buildings in 42 countries. This was driven in part to meet a UK regulatory requirement to disclose energy consumption and carbon footprint, and in part because Morgan Stanley joined a group called the Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit that tracks corporate climate change information –and requires its members to disclose their carbon footprint.

The GE team began its energy treasure hunt at Weidmann by shutting down everything at the factory and searching for things like lights unnecessarily left on, compressed air leaks and running water. For the next two days, with the factory up and running, the GE employees –from GE’s lighting, motors and water divisions — split into groups to focus on water, heat exchangers, motors, lighting and compressed air.