GHG reduction with ARP’s Energy Excellence Team

Under the guidance of ARP’s Director of Energy Excellence, the Energy Excellence team takes a holistic approach to energy efficiency opportunities across ARP operations in North and South America. The team has implemented a range of energy management best practices that contribute to Amcor’s GHG reduction goals. These efforts have helped ARP reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 20.7% since FY16.

Compressed Air Management: The ARP Energy Excellence team developed a set of compressed air leak control best practices which focus on finding and fixing leaks to reduce wasted energy. ARP sites implemented these practices during FY19 with great results. Several sites also partnered with specialized consultants to perform compressed air audits, which resulted in sites like our Addison, Illinois and Itasca, Illinois facilities implementing compressed air system upgrades to achieve significant annual energy savings.

Infrastructure and Other Equipment: To drive efficiencies with plant infrastructure equipment, the team developed standards for high-value opportunity areas such as lighting and chillers. Replacing inefficient lighting with LED lighting and optimizing chiller systems helped ARP sites achieve significant energy savings. The team also pursued other infrastructure- and equipment-related opportunities such as motor repair, air balancing, space pressurization and parallel pumping
best practices.

Energy Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA): The team developed best practices for power quality meters, automatic shutoffs and demand control. Together, all three best practices will help Amcor’s SCADA systems better track and control plant-level energy usage and optimize energy efficiency.

Demand Management: Team members implemented demand management processes to help plants better understand energy curtailment events, on-peak versus off-peak times, and load factors. Improved demand management contributes to greater reliability and stability of the energy grid, and in the long run can help eliminate the need to build new energy infrastructure. To maximize the opportunities described above, the team conducted energy kaizen events at individual sites to create site-specific plans for achieving energy savings.

ARP also became an ENERGY STAR® Partner in FY19, making a fundamental commitment to protect the environment through the continuous improvement of energy performance. Through the partnership with ENERGY STAR, a program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ARP sites in the U.S. and Canada commit to measure, track, and improve their energy performance.

“We’re heavily focused on creating long-term value for the company by developing and sharing a wide range of energy management best practices for our plants in North and Latin America.”
Brad Runda, Director of Energy Excellence, Amcor Rigid Packaging