Neenah, Inc.: 50001 Ready Facility

The existing Energy Team at Neenah Inc.’s paper mill in Whiting, Wisconsin learned about 50001 Ready after joining Wisconsin’s utility-funded energy efficiency and renewable resource program - Focus on Energy. The mill’s manager and employees recognized 50001 Ready as a beneficial way to elevate the facility’s ongoing efforts to streamline daily operations, reduce the mill’s energy footprint, and take advantage of utility incentives to save energy.

Connecting monthly energy savings to specific energy activities or projects has enabled the Energy Team to incorporate its most successful measures into other parts of the mill. The 50001 Ready process strengthened existing energy management practices by adding useful measurement and evaluation steps and helped the facility obtain national recognition for its energy achievements.

Implementing a 50001 Ready Energy Management System

• 50001 Ready Implementation: The Whiting mill’s Energy Team found the action items in the 50001 Ready Navigator tool very useful. The team’s earlier work in connection with the Focus on Energy program had generated a policy, action plan, and performance metrics, so only a few additional (yet valuable) steps were needed to complete the 50001 Ready process.  
• Energy Team: The mill’s existing six-person Energy Team is led by the mill’s environmental engineer; other members represent financial, mechanical, quality, and technical aspects of mill operations. The 50001 Ready procedures have helped the team work to ensure that energy savings will continue, even in the event of personnel changes at the mill. Team meetings include a Focus on Energy consultant who regularly supplies input and updates on utility incentive programs. To keep the entire mill workforce engaged, the team is now developing dashboards to display energy data in worker breakrooms and other locations.
• Energy Performance Modeling: Neenah’s Whiting mill used DOE’s Energy Performance Indicator (EnPI) Lite tool to quantify its natural gas and electricity savings, helping to verify previous calculations and obtain 50001 Ready status. 
• Keys to Success: The Whiting Energy Team offers two key tips: (1) track your progress and maintain good documentation to avoid backtracking, and (2) share all energy management documents by placing them in an intranet/shared-drive folder to keep everyone on the same page. The team found it useful to work through the 50001 Ready Navigator in conjunction with the Strategic Energy Management manual provided by Focus on Energy.