Report

EPL: an energy performance measure for industrial estates

On industrial estates there is presently great interest in energy conservation and use of renewable energy sources, with government and industry alike seeking to improve overall energy performance. What is still lacking, though, is a yardstick against which to measure such improvements.
EPL (the Dutch abbreviation of ‘Energy Performance of Estate’) is a tool permitting straightforward comparison between the efficiency of energy options implemented individually and collectively. Used on new housing estates EPL has already proved its worth, leaving parties free to choose how energy savings are to be achieved while still leaving the end result amenable to standardised measurement.
At the request of IPO (Interprovinciaal Overleg), CE examined the feasibility of an EPL for new and existing industrial estates and whether such a tool could eventually provide what potential user groups are looking for. This feasibility study shows that development of this kind of EPL is indeed technically feasible. Given a number of problems identified in the study, this EPL will not be as accurate as that for housing projects, but sufficiently so for guiding additional measures to cut energy consumption on industrial estates.
Variants 1 (‘integrated’) and 4 (‘quick and dirty’) of the indicator satisfy user group requirements. A ‘combined’ EPL that switches from variant 4 to variant 1 depending on data availability and phase of site development yields a handy and readily communicable indicator that can be usefully be applied in choosing which energy measures can best be implemented on both new and existing industrial estates. This EPL is based on the energy consumption of both buildings and production processes.

More about