ENERGY STAR Focus on Energy Efficiency in Aerospace & Defense

Aerospace and Defense Focus
Participants of the Aerospace and Defense Focus at the 2019 ENERGY STAR Industrial Partners and Focus Meeting.

The “aerospace and defense focus” is a partnership between EPA’s ENERGY STAR program and companies in the aerospace and defense industry to improve energy efficiency within their operations.

Background

The aerospace and defense group is comprised of companies that manufacture a range of products from civilian and military aircraft to rockets, satellites and space vehicles. While energy drivers vary by facility type, energy use in this sector is typically dominated by surface finishing operations, which includes anodizing, plating, coatings, painting and stripping processes, and testing operations. 

In 2018 aerospace products and parts and other defense manufacturers spent $1.4 billion dollars on electricity and fuels. This is approximately 1.6% of the amount of money spent on energy by the U.S. manufacturing sector in 2018. When compared to other industries in the manufacturing sector, aerospace and defense on average spends much more on electricity than fuel in its operations.1

What we do

Through discussions and best practice sharing, companies that participate learn innovative ways of industry:

  • Reducing their energy consumption
  • Saving money on utility bills
  • Developing stronger and more effective energy management programs within their companies
  • Engaging staff and creating a culture of energy efficiency

Past and current discussions include:

  • Goal setting
  • Who manages metrics in plants and corporate level
  • Energy drivers in aerospace facilities
  • Regression-based energy efficiency metrics
  • Retro-commissioning
  • Data centers
  • Water and energy
  • Submetering
  • Corporate indexing approach to measure energy reductions

Participating companies also have access to ENERGY STAR industrial energy management networking opportunities including in person meeting and webinars as well as recognition opportunities from EPA.

Participant Energy Highlights

Lockheed Martin: In a multi-year project at Lockheed Martin’s Moorestown, New Jersey facility, the centralized steam plant was eliminated and replaced with a distributed system of high-efficiency hot water boilers located in several buildings to optimize efficiency and reduce the energy required to heat this site. The affected systems and equipment were retrofitted with new controls and programming, including variable frequency drives, to improve operational reliability and accuracy. This update avoids annual costs of $518,000 and reduces natural gas consumption by 24%. The project resulted in an estimated annual energy savings of 17,580 MMBTU.

More coming soon...

Getting Involved

Companies in this sector can get started on a path of saving energy by using the ENERGY STAR Guidelines for Energy Management to build an energy management program. Companies can then work within this focus to learn best practices from the industry.  If you want to get involved in your industry’s efforts to save energy, contact energystrategy@energystar.gov.

1Source: Annual Survey of Manufacturers: Summary Statistics for Industry Groups in the U.S. (2018)