World To Oil & Gas: 'Reduce Your Climate Impacts'
(So How Can Today's RAM Pros Help?)
By Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, Editor
The past few weeks have been a pressure cooker for large oil and gas companies. The message delivered by shareholders was clear: “Get serious about your environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance [particularly regarding climate impacts]." Consider the following news:
In an unprecedented move, the Hague District Court recently ordered Royal Dutch Shell to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45%, by 2030. Chevron’s shareholders voted in favor of a plan to reduce its Scope 3 emissions. (Scope 3 refers to indirect emissions resulting from use of a company's products, such as fuel and chemicals.) Moreover, in a profound development, the ESG-driven investment firm Engine No. 1, which owns only a 0.02% stake in Exxon, managed to land three of the four
activists that it nominated on the Exxon Board of Directors. By all accounts, those nominations were backed by major Exxon investors BlackRock and Vanguard, which also have made their commitment to ESG goals very clear.
What does that news mean to those of us in reliability, availability, and maintenance (RAM) trenches? It means that it’s time to make sustainable manufacturing practices a priority. I have written about this in the past: As RAM professionals, our ability to influence emissions associated with Scope 3 is limited. We can, however, significantly impact other GHG emissions by implementing better asset-management practices, especially on energy consumption and fugitive emissions.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that refineries can reduce energy consumption by over 13% through the implementation of existing, state-of-the-art practices. DOE also estimates that with investment in R&D, this sector could reduce its energy consumption by over 38%. The opportunity is even greater in the chemical industry, where implementing current best practices would reduce energy consumption by nearly 23%. With some investment, however, the chemical sector's energy
consumption, could, conceivably, be reduced by more than 62%. (For the most part, that type of investing would go toward asset-management improvements to boost combustion efficiency, reduce parasitic frictional losses, eliminate leaks and fugitive emissions in compressed-fluid systems, manage flares, etc.)
Let’s put this opportunity into perspective. The total end-use energy consumed in the United States equates to about 21,000 TWh (a TWh is equal to 1,000,000 MWh). About 35% (or 7.5 TWh) of that end-use energy is consumed by the industrial sector. Together, the chemical and refining sectors are responsible for 60% of industrial-energy consumption. The chemical industry's efforts to cut its energy consumption by 23% would result in a reduction of 0.66 TWh. Similarly, the refining sector could save
another 0.22 TWh. With investments in future technologies, these two sectors alone would be able to reduce energy consumption by 2.43 TWh. That's nearly one-third of the total industrial sector’s current energy consumption.
Now, let's translate those calculations into climate impacts. As a general rule, each kWh of energy consumed produces about 0.707 kg of CO2-equivelent emissions. By implementing current state-of-the-art energy-management practices in the refining and chemical industries, we could reduce CO2-equivelent emissions by over 20%, or about 622,000 metric tons.
The market has spoken. Reducing climate impacts in the petrochemical industry is a top priority. RAM professionals certainly can’t solve the entire industrial GHG emissions problem. But we can think globally, act locally, and become a big part of the solution. By doing so, we can reduce energy costs associated with production, reduce carbon impacts, and reduce Scope 3 emissions by increasing the life of our equipment assets. It’s a good-news story, all the way around!
MORE FRESH FOOD FOR THOUGHT THIS WEEK
Revisiting 50 Years Of Diaphragm Couplings
By Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor
Carried over from aircraft applications where they originated, diaphragm couplings have been evolving since the 1950s. Used in industry, they now rank among the most reliable components in modern fluid machines.
Let's Make Industrial Training Work
By Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor
Sadly, industrial “training” in the U.S. often misses the mark. That’s bad news for workers and employers alike. This article highlights good news: successful approaches to a tough workforce dilemma.
Eliminate Contamination: A Two-Part Strategy
By Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor
Lubricant contamination, which comes in various forms, from various sources, is a bona fide machine killer. Sites that depend on lubricated equipment ignore it at their peril. The author lays out a plan.
Energy & Reliability Opportunities: (Part 8)
Taking A Look At The Bigger Picture
By Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP
It’s very human to identify and correct a problem, then move on, even though said problem may actually be a symptom of a larger issue. That approach doesn’t work very well in industrial operations.
BY T.A. COOK
Managing Maintenance As A Value Center
It’s a fact: Investing in maintenance improves business performance. Isn’t it time for maintenance professionals everywhere to take hold of their fate and start acting like the ‘value center’ they are?
LEST YOU MISSED IT ELSEWHERE
|
When you’re in the manufacturing business, how do you approach digital transformation? Is there more than one way? Are there pitfalls to avoid? How can you identify (and mitigate) the hurdles? Ricardo Craft, of Conexiom, asks those questions in a recently posted article on Manufacturing.net. As he points out, "Expected and unexpected challenges
can undermine even the most strategic, well-planned automation initiatives."
Learn More
|
|