Energy Management System from a Net-Zero Emissions Perspective

— Che-Jen Wu, General Manager at Product Development Department, CTCI ASI, Group Intelligent Solutions Business

As an international engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) group which ranks first in Taiwan and top 100 in the world, CTCI inevitably has a role to play in the global wave of net-zero emissions. In an effort to achieve a win-win situation for the economy and the environment while making substantial contributions to the sustainability of the planet, we actively collaborate with business owners and suppliers upstream and downstream to create environmentally friendly green projects.

This article will shed light on the global net-zero trend, Taiwan's sustainability policies, ISO 50001 Energy Management standards, and how CTCI ASI, a CTCI Group company, can assist enterprises in their energy management and carbon reduction goals with its unique management system called "Mr. Energy.”

A Look at the Agreements and Commitments Related to Greenhouse Gases around the World

In the late 1980s, as the world became aware of the dangers of climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established as the main mechanism for global greenhouse gases reduction negotiations. Since then, various agreements have been also established, ranging from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to the Paris Agreement in 2015, all of which require nations to commit to reducing greenhouse gases emissions to limit global temperature rise to a certain range.

The signing of the Paris Agreement represented a formal integration between the scientific concept of controlling global warming within 1.5℃ and international policies. It marked the beginning of a new era in climate change, as nations must proactively drive measures to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. There is now an international consensus that to achieve this goal, the world must achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and continue to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Taiwan's response policy

In July 2015, Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration promulgated and implemented the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act. Amendment of the act and a change of its name into Climate Change Response Act was proposed in 2021, before finally being passed into law on January 10, 2023 by the Legislative Yuan. The new law promises to incorporate the 2050 net-zero emission target, specifies the powers and responsibilities of the competent authorities, becomes the source of ideas and laws for future climate governance, and determines the future imposition of carbon fees and earmarked funds for specific purposes. Taiwan has become the third Asian nation, after Japan and South Korea, to place net-zero emissions in the law.

Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Committee has also proposed the “Sustainable Development Guidemap for TWSE- and TPEx-Listed Companies,” which requires all TWSE/TPEx listed companies to take an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions and seek verification. Companies should gradually disclose the information on their greenhouse gases emissions to the same extent as the company's consolidated financial statements. The chronological agenda is as follows:

Driven by these laws, companies must disclose and verify greenhouse gas emissions through third-party institutions. This is only the first step towards achieving net zero emissions, however. Companies must subsequently follow and set carbon reduction targets to achieve their sustainable development goals.

Reducing energy consumption as top priority

It is well known that the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions comes from energy consumption. ISO 14064-1:2018 defines Scope 2 emissions specifically related to energy consumption, but other scopes of emissions are mostly related to energy use as well. So to achieve the goal of net-zero emissions, it is imperative to reduce the emissions that come from energy consumption.

While the government should set active policy measures to reduce the use of fossil fuels and develop renewable energy, enterprises and individuals must play their part in energy conservation. This includes changing power use habits and consumption habits to improve energy efficiency; using low power-consumption equipment; and cutting down unnecessary power consumption.

For large-scale energy-intensive enterprises, reducing energy consumption has become a necessity. As opposed to enterprises focusing only on saving energy costs in the past, with the emergence of ESG in recent years, enterprises must make more investment to make a difference for their own sustainable development and social responsibility. That said, as the energy consumption of large-scale enterprises is extremely complex and intertwined with production, it is indispensable to have a good energy management system and platform in place that helps keep track of the overall picture of an enterprise’s energy use and energy efficiency at all times, so that a reduction in energy consumption does not sacrifice business operations.

ISO 50001 Energy Management

ISO 50001 was published in 2012 as a common international standard for energy management. Through Plan-Do-Check-Action (PDCA) implementation cycle, enterprises or organizations can not only quantify and effectively manage energy consumption, but can also determine which areas need improvement, and therefore be able to enhance the energy efficiency as well as keep improving energy management effectiveness.

In terms of management, ISO 50001 can progressively help change the corporate culture, continuously improve energy efficiency and performance, and entrench energy efficiency perspectives in daily decision-making mechanisms. Since people are the biggest variable in the execution system and a key success factor, commingling energy efficiency with personal performance can help motivate employees to contribute to achieving energy-saving goals.

In terms of technology, the ISO 50001 specification monitors, measures, and analyzes energy performance within a planned time frame. As energy performance monitoring is more complex and requires more labor, a comprehensive information system that is integrated with on-site data collection can facilitate respective departments to understand their energy consumption status in real time.

Meanwhile, it is often not possible to measure energy performance directly through instruments because various energy performance indicators require specific methodologies, algorithms, or mathematical model calculations. This is why a platform which can provide relevant energy performance indicator calculation and analysis is paramount.

CTCI ASI’s Energy Management System: Mr. Energy

To implement energy performance management, enterprises must have a complete set of tools which can analyze energy consumption data and find the most effective management method with the least amount of labor. Mr. Energy, the energy management system developed by CTCI ASI, a subsidiary of CTCI, is a set of full-fledged suite of product service offerings which has established an outstanding reputation in the industry. In recent years, the system has been successfully introduced to leading enterprises in various industries such as wafer fabs, packaging and testing, panel factories, petrochemical plants, etc., and has been adopted by more than 40 high-energy-consuming plants. The advantage of this system lies in its ability to simplify complex and repetitive energy management tasks in a systematic and automated manner in accordance with the ISO 50001 standard, which not only reduces the labor and cost of implementing an energy management system for enterprises, but also significantly reduces inevitable omissions and errors in manual statistics.

The Mr. Energy system can help manage the energy consumption data of the entire plant’s production machines and utilities. Operators can apprehend the real-time energy consumption indicators of various systems or individual machines, understand energy use performance, and analyze long-term data records to identify problems and make early intervention steps. At the same time, through the built-in visual module of the system, tweaks can be done to develop a dedicated energy management system which addresses the needs of customers in various fields. It is thus easier to incorporate energy management work into daily operations so as to achieve energy conservation and implement carbon reduction goals.

In addition, in response to the trend of net-zero and national policies, taking inventory of greenhouse gases has become a necessary task for listed and OTC companies. Mr. Energy has also begun to extend the energy management function to the field of greenhouse gas inventories, further developing an intelligent greenhouse gas inventory module to help enterprises conduct greenhouse gas inventories. The integration of this module with Mr. Energy Energy can help enterprises plan and validate their subsequent emission reduction efforts, and drive the continuity of enterprises’ greenhouse gas emissions management.

Looking forward to the future, CTCI will continue to refine energy-saving and carbon reduction technologies through research and development of innovative technologies, assist business owners in implementing carbon reduction goals, and march progressively towards the net-zero emissions vision.