ENERGY STAR Focus on Energy Efficiency in Corn Refining

What is the Corn Refining Focus?

The Focus is a partnership between US EPA's ENERGY STAR program and wet corn milling companies to improve energy efficiency.

How does the Focus improve energy efficiency?

EPA helps corn refiners overcome barriers to using energy efficiently and provides energy management resources unique to this industry. In all cases, strategic corporate energy management is promoted as the basis for achieving long-term, sustained energy savings.

Who may participate?

Any corn refiner/wet corn miller with plants in the U.S. may participate.

Energy management tools and resources

EPA's ENERGY STAR Corn Refining Focus has tools and resources to help you improve energy efficiency, save money, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Score the energy performance of your corn refining plant.

Use EPA's wet corn milling plant energy performance indicator (EPI's) to assess how efficiently your plants use energy, relative to similar plants nationwide. The system's 1–100 scale enables you to quickly understand how your plant is performing — a score of 50 indicates average energy performance, while a score of 75 or better indicates top performance. Plants receiving an EPI score of 75 or higher are eligible to earn nationally recognized ENERGY STAR certification. If your plant scores 75 or above, learn how you can apply for the ENERGY STAR.

• Download the Wet Corn Milling Plant EPI
• Read about the Wet Corn Milling Plant EPI (1.11MB)
• Read about how the original EPI was updated in 2012 (811KB)

Learn about how ENERGY STAR has helped the corn refining industry improve energy performance.

Duke University evaluated the improvement in the U.S. corn refining industry’s energy efficiency. Important findings include:

• A reduction of 6.7 trillion Btu in annual energy use.
• A 4.3% reduction in overall energy use by this industry.
• An annual reduction of 470 million kg of energy-related CO2 equivalent emissions from improved energy efficiency.

The improvement in the energy intensity of corn refining plants over a twelve year period is illustrated below.

Read more at Measuring Improvement in the Energy Performance of the U.S. Corn Refining Industry

Improve the energy efficiency of your corn refining plant.

EPA's energy guide, Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving Opportunities for the Corn Wet Milling Industry discusses energy efficiency practices and technologies that can be implemented right now in your corn refining plants.

• Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving Opportunities for the Corn Wet Milling Industry (1.0MB)

Develop a corporate energy strategy.

Energy Strategy for the Road Ahead is a groundbreaking report that guides companies through the process of evaluating future energy risks and enables them to set a robust energy strategy for the future.

Build a corporate energy management program.

EPA's ENERGY STAR Guidelines for Energy Management outline the steps for creating a corporate energy management program.

Assess your energy management program.

EPA's Energy Management Assessment Matrix is a quick and easy way to compare your corporate energy practices to those outlined in the Guidelines for Energy Management and help you identify areas for improvement.

Network and learn from corn refining energy managers.

Energy managers from corn refining companies participating in the ENERGY STAR focus meet annually to network among themselves and learn together about the challenges confronting energy management in their businesses and identify solutions.

Touring a corn refinery at an annual meeting