ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe is now the proud recipient of ISO 50001 certification, an internationally recognized standard for energy management systems. Awarded by TÜV Nord, the certification is official confirmation of the importance Germany's biggest steel producer attaches to energy efficiency. ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe is thus taking a pioneering role.
Mr Edwin Eichler CEO of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe said that "We are the first European steel company with an energy management system certified to this standard."
With its certified EMS, ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe is constructively supporting European efforts to improve energy efficiency. But the company is also critical of some areas of forthcoming legislation: For example, there are plans to set absolute energy saving targets across the board, without taking appropriate account of previous energy savings. This will particularly impact companies like ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe, who have already undertaken major efforts in the past and now operate with a high level of energy efficiency. Legislators need to apply a sense of proportion in implementing the European requirements so as not to jeopardize Germany as an industrial location.
Following the successful milestone of EMS certification, the company's efficiency drive will of course continue.
Mr Christian Weinrich, head of the Energy Optimization Studies team at ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe, said that "The audit confirmed the effectiveness of our energy management system, which we will now use to continuously improve our energy efficiency even further."
Existing energy efficiency programs will be continued and new projects launched. Next fiscal year, for example, there are plans to recover waste heat from walking beam furnace 6 at hot rolling mill 2 in Duisburg. With an additional 25,000 megawatt hours per year, equivalent to the heating requirements of around 1,700 homes, ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe will altogether provide heat for almost 20,000 households, making it the biggest industrial contributor to district heat networks in the Ruhr area. The company also uses waste heat internally, both in production processes and to heat its own buildings.
In addition, state of the art technologies are helping save energy and conserve resources. For example, the use of regenerative burners in the hot rolling mills significantly reduces the gas consumption of the pusher furnaces. Heat energy contained in high-temperature waste gas is stored directly and fed back to the burner process, allowing further reductions in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe is currently implementing a new software system throughout the company to further increase the transparency of energy flows. It enables the plants to monitor and evaluate their consumption around the clock and thus identify further potential for savings.
The EMS is also part of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe's efforts to maximize cost efficiency.
Mr Weinrich said that "Every kilowatt hour we save cuts costs and helps us remain competitive."
Source - ThyssenKrupp AG
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