Energy Market3 September 2026

5 levers to reduce a factory's energy consumption

Five levers that allow industrial sites to sustainably reduce their energy consumption.

Maximilien Vidalot

Energy Manager at Qualisteo

Five complementary levers structure most industrial programmes today. Energy sufficiency, efficiency, waste heat recovery, energy mix and eco-design: each one calls on different resources.

1. Energy sufficiency: put an end to waste

Reducing consumption starts by questioning the need behind it, before even considering a technical investment.

Energy sufficiency is very often the lever that generates the most savings without requiring heavy investment. It simply means paying closer attention day to day.

A significant share of the energy consumed in a factory corresponds to no actual production. Equipment left on standby over the weekend, heating set to schedules that no longer match activity, or a line left running while it is stopped. These gaps remain invisible until detailed monitoring reveals them.

An industrial site that installs a network of sub-meters often discovers that 10 to 15% of its bill corresponds to this kind of residual consumption, unrelated to production. Correcting it requires no heavy investment, only a change of settings.

2. Energy efficiency: produce more with less energy

For the same output, energy efficiency aims to consume less for an identical result.

This approach is structured over time through an energy management system. The gains obtained on targeted equipment, pumps, motors, ventilation, are then verified through precise monitoring by end use. An energy management software makes it possible to verify these gains by applying the IPMVP protocol.

As mentioned above, investment only comes once usage and settings have been optimised. A site that then replaces its fixed-flow pumps with models fitted with variable frequency drives can objectively record a consumption drop of around 10% on that item.

3. Recovering waste heat

A significant part of the energy consumed in a factory is lost as heat rather than being put to use.

In an industrial furnace, only 20 to 40% of the fuel's energy actually serves the process. The rest is lost in vapour, flue gases or cooling water, heat that could nevertheless be reinjected into the process or used elsewhere on the site.

For example, a food-processing site that recovers the heat produced by its refrigeration units to preheat its process water illustrates this kind of approach.

For sites that produce even more heat, such as waste incinerators, solutions exist to produce and resell electricity generated from this waste heat.

4. Changing the energy mix: reducing the share of fossil fuels

Reducing the share of fossil fuels in a site's consumption lowers both the bill and the exposure to their volatility.

Heat accounts for more than 40% of the final energy consumed by industry, and a large majority still comes from fossil sources. Introducing a renewable or recovered source, even partially, durably changes that balance.

A factory that invests in switching from an oil-fired boiler to a biomass boiler reduces its dependence on fossil fuel imports and therefore its exposure to oil price volatility. In addition, switching from oil to biomass divides that boiler's CO2 emissions by 10.

5. Integrating the factory into its local area

Limiting a building's environmental impact from the design stage is also a very effective solution, but it requires heavy investment, significant planning and coordination with neighbouring companies, local residents and public authorities.

At the scale of a district or a city, some infrastructure and resources can be shared, such as heating or air conditioning.

It is possible to go further by working together with neighbours. What is waste for one company can be a valuable resource for another, and this is particularly true of heat.

Data centres, treated as industrial buildings, are known for producing a lot of heat. By partnering with a district heating operator, a data centre can reuse its heat to produce domestic hot water for the city's residents.

Setting up an energy management system (EnMS) is the first thing to do

As explained above, energy sufficiency and energy efficiency are the levers that require the least investment and produce the most results, and quickly.

They require setting up an EnMS, that is, tools to measure energy consumption in detail and human resources to analyse this data and recommend corrective actions.

For more than 10 years, Qualisteo has been supporting companies in setting up EnMS, delivering energy savings of 12.4% on average in 2025.