ENERGY STAR Focus on Energy Efficiency in Fruit and Vegetable Processing

The Fruit & Vegetable Processing Focus is a partnership between EPA’s ENERGY STAR program and food processing companies to improve energy efficiency within their operations. Tools are available here to help improve manufacturing energy efficiency, save money, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Fruit & Vegetable Processors can get started on a path of saving energy by using the ENERGY STAR Guidelines for Energy Management to build an energy management program, and then work within this food processing network to learn best practices from the industry.  If you are a fruit & vegetable processor who wants to get involved in your industry’s efforts to save energy, contact energystrategy@energystar.gov.

Plant energy performance indicator (EPI) tools

ENERGY STAR EPIs assess the energy performance of plants relative to similar plants in the U.S. EPIs and provide a 1 - 100 ENERGY STAR score for a quick understanding of how the plant is performing. Plants receiving a score of 75 or higher are eligible to earn ENERGY STAR certification.  EPA has developed EPIs for the following food processing plants:

• Frozen Fried Potato Processing Plants
• Juice Plants 

To learn more about how EPIs are developed, how to interpret an EPI score, and how to value benchmarking view the Benchmarking Industrial Energy Performance guide.

Draft energy performance indicators in development

The following draft EPIs are out for industry comment and feedback.  Help is needed in reviewing the model before it can be finalized. Please send any feedback on these draft EPIs to Gale Boyd at Duke University at gale.boyd@duke.edu.

• Draft Tomato Product Processing Plant EPI

Plant energy guides

Use these energy guide guides find ways to improve the energy performance of your food processing plants:

• Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving Opportunities for the Fruit and Vegetable Processing Industry

EPI Technical Documentation 

Learn more about how the ENERGY STAR Energy Performance Indicators were developed.

• Frozen Fried Potato Processing Plant EPI Technical Documentation