By Jennifer Shine, Principal Solution Engineer at Imubit
A shift in priorities
Energy volatility and market dynamics are forcing a recalibration across the process industries. Projects once labeled green transformations are being scaled back or postponed because of market volatility, political uncertainty and tighter capital budgets. Energy is still one of the largest operating expenses in the plant. Speakers at LARTC, the Latin American refining technology conference, put it at nearly 50% of operating expense.
That makes reducing energy use and emissions a core business decision that shapes competitiveness and profitability, well beyond ESG reporting or branding.
The economics of energy
Energy costs weigh heavily on production in refining, petrochemicals and cement. Every point of improvement goes straight to margin. In Europe, rising carbon costs and regulation demand efficiency. In North America, investors tie performance to proof of safety, reliability and sustainability.
The regions differ, but the conclusion is the same. Energy efficiency is a lever executives can pull to reduce cost and emissions at the same time.
Too many promises
Executives are inundated with solutions that promise "2 to 3x returns" or "double-digit efficiency gains" with no transparency on how they get there. The volume of competing claims breeds fatigue and skepticism, and often leads to indecision.
What leaders need is plain, verifiable evidence of which projects deliver sustained energy and emissions reductions at low cost. The organizations that perform best set the competing claims aside and focus on fundamentals with measurable outcomes.
Four tests for an energy project
At LARTC, one theme came up again and again, on stage and in hallway conversations: success depends less on how many projects a company runs than on how well it chooses them. Four tests help with that choice.
- Scale of impact. Does the project target the high-energy assets and large emission sources, rather than peripheral systems?
- Capital efficiency. Can one platform serve several use cases, so that capital spending stays low and the return is high?
- Verifiable results. Are savings measured with transparent, auditable plant data rather than vendor slides?
- Action as well as prediction. Does the solution act on what it finds, in closed loop, inside limits set by plant engineers, or does it stop at forecasts and dashboards? Performance improves when the system adjusts the process continuously, rather than leaving operators to react to alerts.
When emissions are calculated and tracked around the clock, each adjustment to the process shows up in the record. A closed-loop controller makes small setpoint moves many times a day, and those moves add up to measurable reductions in energy use and emissions across the unit.
Projects that pass all four tests deliver change that holds up to scrutiny, often with more sustainability value per unit of capital than large hardware projects.
Regional differences, the same economics
Every market brings its own context: subsidies in one region, carbon pricing in another, political turbulence somewhere else. None of these changes the core economics. Reducing energy use is a dependable way to cut both cost and emissions.
Whether the plant is in Brazil, Texas or Rotterdam, the math holds. A refinery that reduces its energy consumption gets immediate cost relief and long-term credibility on emissions. Leaders should not treat this as a regional initiative.
What it asks of executives
Capital markets and competition are moving faster than policy and reporting frameworks. Whether to invest in energy reduction is largely settled. The open question is how to build it into every decision. Forward-looking leaders are asking how to capture incremental energy gains in every project, and how one investment can deliver efficiency across many initiatives.
Companies that treat energy and emissions reduction as a design principle, backed by clear economics, disciplined execution and verifiable impact, will be better placed for the decade ahead.
Beyond green
Sustainability used to be a choice that industrial companies could lean into or not. It is becoming a condition of staying competitive, and energy is the lever most plants can pull today.
Imubit applies closed-loop control to energy-intensive units in refining, chemicals and polymers, cement, and mining and minerals, on top of the plant's existing APC and DCS. Where energy is the optimization target, Imubit deployments have delivered a 15 to 30% reduction in energy consumption.
