Each year, Quad/Graphics runs hundreds of billions of pages of magazines and catalogs off its printing presses, from the latest seasonal catalogs of L.L. Bean, to the most recent issues of Sports Illustrated, Playboy and Time. But it recently found a way to generate even greater profits requiring only a modest investment.

Quad/Graphics uses more than a dozen air compressors in each of its plants. It costs $425,000 a year to power just one 1,000-hp compressor, and by the estimate of the Department of Energy, manufacturers waste nearly a fifth of those costs on various leaks.

Quad/Graphics purchased a few sets of ultrasonic equipment and patched holes in each compressor throughout its facilities. Each one saved, on average, $85,000 a year. But multiply that number by the hundreds of compressors spread across Quad/Graphics' 11 plants in North America and the savings grow more significant.

Opportunities like this abound throughout the industrial sector. U.S. industry accounts for more than a third of the nation's energy consumption, but it also represents a wealth of energy-efficiency opportunity. According to a recent McKinsey report, various industrial processes such as more efficient operating equipment could save a combined $447 billion through present-value investments of $113 billion, the majority of which would require paybacks of fewer than two-and-a-half years.

Printer Quad/Graphics has instituted a series of energy management initiatives throughout its 11 facilities in North America. The company's print-production platform is highly automated, as demonstrated by an employee in its finishing department who uses a crane system to grab product from the floor and feed it into the binder.

But few companies are doing an effective job of managing their energy, experts say.

"CEOs today can tell you exactly what they're spending on IT, how much they're spending on healthcare and where those costs are going and what the trend is," says Jeff Drees, president of the building automation business unit of Schneider Electric. "But ask them about energy and they have no idea. Yet energy is just as controllable."

Understanding the Cost

So why haven't more companies instituted aggressive energy management programs? There are several significant barriers, starting with substantial upfront investments and the fact that energy management isn't necessarily a top priority for many companies. There are also hundreds of different opportunities fragmented across thousands of devices, making instituting a comprehensive initiative a daunting task, especially for manufacturers that aren't operating with the same resources as many larger corporations.

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