Business: Industrial

Setting up an Energy Management Program
1.2 Auditing energy use in a foundry

We will focus on the initial energy audit. An energy audit is a key step that
establishes the baseline from which you will measure future energy efficiency
improvements. (Other energy audits may be performed later to, for example,
verify achievements or uncover other incremental energy-saving opportunities.)

Following
is a list of practice-proven steps in energy auditing.

Energy audit purpose

Why have an audit²? Can’t an excellent energy conservation project yielding
good financial return be undertaken without an audit?

Yes, it can. It is likely,
however, that without the systematic approach of the audit, this ad hoc application
of energy management may cause many opportunities – some
of which could be better than expected – to be missed; thus the benefits
of projects’ synergies would remain hidden.

An audit has four main stages:

• Initiating the audit;
• Preparing the audit;
• Auditing; and
• Reporting the audit results.
  
   

² ISO 14001 defines an audit as “a systematic,
documented verification of objectively obtaining and evaluating audit evidence,
in conformance with audit criteria and followed by communication of results
to the client.”