General Mills: Energy performance

Better Buildings, Better Plants Challenge partners strive to decrease portfolio-wide source energy use intensity (EUI) and increase the percent improvement compared to a set baseline. With an energy intensity improvement of 0.2% since its baseline year of 2019, General Mills is on this path to meet its second 20% reduction in energy intensity target by 2029. A key aspect of its corporate energy management approach is continual improvement. To achieve continual improvement, General Mills has identified and trained internal utilities maintenance/engineering leaders at the plant level for their energy-intensive plants. This group identifies and implements a wide variety of capital projects, low-cost/no-cost projects, and behavioral changes to achieve its energy results. 

Looking at the percent improvement in energy performance across all facilities can provide insight into how an organization is saving energy. General Mills has achieved an energy performance improvement of 4% or more at 2 of its facilities, with 7 of its facilities having achieved some improvement over the past year. Eight of General Mills 15 facilities have experienced no improvement or an increase in energy intensity, indicating the company still has room to improve on its already significant energy efficiency accomplishments.

The scope of General Mills' pledge includes 15 plants, most manufacturing a mix of products. General Mills uses energy per pound of product in determining energy intensity at the plant and corporate levels. The absolute change and percent change in source energy use, production output, and energy intensity are tracked for each facility on both a monthly and annual basis. These metrics are rolled up to the corporate level using DOE's EnPI tool.