ENERGY STAR Focus on Energy Efficiency in Motor Vehicle Manufacturing

What is the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Focus?

The Focus is a partnership between US EPA’s ENERGY STAR program and motor vehicle companies to improve energy efficiency.

How does the Focus improve energy efficiency?

EPA helps motor vehicle manufacturers 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 motor vehicle manufacturer with plants in the U.S. may participate.

Energy management tools and resources

EPA’s ENERGY STAR Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Focus has tools and resources to help you improve energy efficiency, save money, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Score the energy performance of your motor vehicle plant.

Use EPA’s auto assembly plant energy performance indicator (EPI) 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 Automobile Assembly Plant EPI
• Read about the Automobile Assembly Plant EPI (548KB)
• Read about how the original EPI was updated in 2010 (406KB)

Learn about how ENERGY STAR has helped U.S. auto assembly plants improve energy performance

Duke University evaluated the improvement of U.S. auto assembly plant energy efficiency. Important findings include:

• Fossil fuel use decreased by 12 percent.
• The gap between top performing plants and others closed while the performance of the industry as a whole improved.
• Environmental savings are more than 700,000 metric tons of energy-related carbon.

The improvement in the energy intensity of auto assembly plants over a five year period is illustrated below.

For further information, see: Assessing Improvement in the Energy Efficiency of U.S. Auto Assembly Plants.

Improve the energy efficiency of your auto assembly plant.

EPA’s energy guide, Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving Opportunities for the Vehicle Assembly Industry discusses energy efficiency practices and technologies that can be implemented right now in your auto assembly plants.

• Download the Energy Guide (973KB)

Compare the lighting levels of your plant to the best practice lighting levels used by companies participating in the ENERGY STAR Motor Vehicle Focus.

• Download the Motor Vehicle Plant Lighting Level Best Practices

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 auto energy managers.

Energy managers from motor vehicle manufacturing 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.