Abstract
The industrial or manufacturing sector is a foundational component to all economic activity. In addition to being a large direct consumer of energy, the manufacturing sector also produces materials, products, and technologies that influence the energy use of other economic sectors. For example, the manufacturing of a lighter-weight vehicle component affects the energy required to ship that component as well as the fuel efficiency of the assembled vehicle. Many energy efficiency opportunities exist to improve manufacturing energy consumption, however comparisons of manufacturing sector energy efficiency investment opportunities tend to exclude any impacts that occur once the product leaves the factory. Expanding the scope of analysis to include energy impacts across different stages of product life-cycle can highlight less obvious opportunities and inform actions that create the greatest economy-wide benefits. We present a methodology and associated analysis tool (LIGHTEnUP – Lifecycle Industry GHgas, Technology and Energy through the Use Phase) that aims to capture both the manufacturing sector energy consumption and product life-cycle energy consumption implications of manufacturing innovation measures. The tool architecture incorporates U.S. national energy use data associated with manufacturing, building operations, and transportation. Inputs for technology assessment, both direct energy saving to the manufacturing sector, and indirect energy impacts to additional sectors are estimated through extensive literature review and engineering methods. The result is a transparent and uniform system of comparing manufacturing and use-phase impacts of technologies.
