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I'll start with introducing Peter Raymond an environmental engineer with the Reynolds
Flexible Packaging here in Louisville they are one of the signees and pledgers to the
Kentucky Save Energy Now Program. Peter
Good morning. My name is Peter Raymond. I’m the environmental engineer with the Reynolds
Flexible Packaging Louisville laminating plant which is a manufacturing facility here in
town, with around 130 employees and represented by 3 unions. We have 3 main product lines,
one being cigarette inner foil for both the domestic and international tobacco market,
insulation backing for the housing market as well as cable wrap for telecommunications.
Our key focus area has been on energy use, because even though it has been a down economy
for cigarettes, insulation and telecommunications, by allowing us to control the variable costs
of energy we did not have to lay off any employees during the recent economic downturn and are
actually looking to expand our businesses. We initially started working with KPPC back
in August of 2009, when they’d done a utility bill rate analysis for us. They came in February
of 2010 for an on-site facility assessment for energy usage. They did an environmental
sustainability assessment report that was generated in March of 2010 and provided us
with the background and framework for us to form our energy team and implement the ideas
suggested by them. The environmental sustainability assessment report provided us with 8 energy
management opportunities that ranged from zero dollars investment with an immediate
payback to a $90,000 investment with an 8 year payback. And as they indicated, it’s
hard to even justify a $90,000 improvement now for an 8 year payback, so we decided to
focus our energy and efforts on the low cost, low dollar, immediate return opportunities.
However, so, we did focus on projects with less than a two year return on investment
as well as behavior-based improvements in our facility, but we will use the money generated
through these early successes for long-term capital improvements in our facility. What
we believe are the benefits of using KPPC and the services they offer is that they allow
our facility to steal shamelessly from other facilities and learn from the things they’ve
implemented, both good and bad. And I don’t know if you know this or not, but a lot of
vendors will promise you the sky when selling something, and everything they have is the
most perfect piece of equipment, it’s going to drive your energy costs down, it’s the
silver bullet that you’re looking for - for energy improvement. Well, we’ve used
KPPC to evaluate those opportunities that say, you know, this is actually going to return
this much money, you know, when comparing boilers or lighting systems. You know, various
facilities have had success with good lighting improvements. Other ones have had regrets
where the light bulbs haven’t lasted as long as previously, as they were told and
haven’t provided the illumination that they need. So we’ve been able to learn from the
other facilities that KPPC works with. It’s a confidential, non-regulatory, free service
that isn’t selling us anything. They’re trying to help us drive our energy reduction
down. They don’t have any ulterior motives. So when they come meet with us, it’s not
just to, say – with a motors vendor, they want to sell you motors, a boiler vendor wants
to sell you a new boiler - KPPC looks at you as an entire facility and helps you identify
various opportunities that help drive down your total energy costs. They have identified
cost-saving opportunities by switching us to industrial time of day rate schedule. This
is kind of like that “found money” that Cam was referring to, whereby switching, looking,
at our demand usage, we evaluated the rate schedules that were available to us and switching
to the ITOD rate schedule we have had a 10% reduction in our electrical bills. Which is
not an actual energy reduction, but it is like getting a free electric bill a year,
so that really helps us out a lot. They also helped us focus our efforts, both internal
and external, and capital on those projects and opportunities that have the best ROI.
When we first started our energy team, a lot of different people had ideas as to what we
should focus on. By having KPPC come in and help guide us, kind of focus our energy and
attention on the things that would really pay off for us in the long run. The other
good thing about KPPC is their Kentucky Save Energy Now pledge, which is 2.5% per year
over the next 10 years for a total of 25%. This really supports our corporate goal of
3.3% over the next 3 years for a total of 10%. So if we can get our 10% over the next
3 years that will help us in the corporate environment as well as help drive us down
the path of the Kentucky SEN. The final benefit that we’ve been realizing is that many customers
require sustainability information – you know, both scorecards and matrices to continue
doing business with us, as well as increasing their current workload. So I think it’s
been a win-win-win for everyone involved for our facility and we really appreciate all
the help that KPPC has provided us. Thank you.