E3Agro Project Helps Reduce Energy Used in Agro-Industry

The Thai Department of Alternative Energy Development and Efficiency (DEDE) under the Thai Ministry of Energy, together with GTZ have successfully completed the Energy & Eco-Efficiency in Agro-Industry (E3Agro) Project, with 3 main target sectors based on three sectors: palm oil, tapioca starch and shrimps. The project was supported under a grant from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The E3Agro Project was launched in July 2004, with the aim of strengthening the competitiveness of the Thai agro-industry by implementing cost-effective production process technologies and professional management techniques, by promoting efficient energy use, and by improving utilization of biomass for energy. The project has integrated the overall management of quality, environment, energy and information into a combined system of international best-practice manufacturing. From 2004 to 2006, the project selected the palm oil Industry as its first pilot sector, later followed by the tapioca starch and shrimp sectors.

18 months after launching the first interventions, analysis of the impact on the palm oil industry revealed major productivity gains, mainly through reduction of oil losses, electricity and steam consumption as well as electricity sales to the national grid from biogas plants treating palm oil mill effluent.

The overall benefit for all 31 mills involved in project activities is estimated to exceed 300 million Baht annually. Most of these net annual gains (nearly 200 million Baht) were achieved through eco-efficiency measures by the 16 mills participating in the benchmarking programme.

Specific electricity consumption has been reduced by an average of 9% and specific steam consumption by 11%, resulting in cost savings of 16 and 11 million Baht, respectively. Oil losses have been reduced by 11%, saving 106 million Baht. A further gain of 60 million Baht has been made from sales of electricity from biogas plants to the national grid.

For the tapioca starch Industry, the positive experience of the benchmarking program in the palm oil sector has been applied to 7 native starch factories since June 2007. So far, reductions of 13.78% in starch loss in pulp, and 5.25% savings in specific electricity consumption in production process, have been achieved. So far the 6 participating native starch factories have made overall savings of 16.4 million baht over just a 3 month period.

E3Agro started working in the shrimp sub-sector in December 2006, with various interventions designed and implemented by E3Agro in cooperation with the Department of Fisheries (DOF), beginning with a benchmarking program to analyze current energy use in Thai shrimp farms. The results of this programme show savings in farm energy use of up to 30-40%.