Our guide to improving gas efficiency for your business

With gas prices rising, it’s never been more important for businesses to ensure that their gas consumption is optimised for maximum efficiency. Gas efficiency is essential in not only helping your business to reduce operational costs but also carbon emissions.

To help you get started we’ve created a five-step guide for how to improve gas efficiency for your business.

Step 1: Use data to identify gas efficiency opportunities

Firstly, it’s important to understand your current site-specific processes and gas usage. One way is to enlist an energy partner like Shell Energy, who can help monitor and interpret your gas usage data with solutions such as the Energy Management Centre (EMC). The EMC combines energy management software with support from our expert energy engineering team and can help pinpoint areas in your business where you can drive energy efficiency.

Once you have a clear understanding of your current gas usage, it becomes easier to identify potential enhancements to reduce gas consumption.

Step 2: Evaluate and upgrade your equipment

Assess your existing gas appliances and equipment to determine their baseline performance and whether they meet industry standards or best practice. Can your equipment run better without capital expenditure? Or are there benefits from upgrading to more modern, gas-efficient versions? Upgrading your gas infrastructure will help ensure that your equipment is not consuming more gas than necessary due to faults caused by age. Upgrading can also help you to unlock further opportunities for efficiency, such as incorporating alternative fuel sources or electrification of your gas infrastructure.

Your business may also be eligible to generate environmental certificates for upgrading your equipment, which can help offset the cost of undertaking the project. To learn more about environmental certificates and how they could be incorporated into your gas efficiency plan, click here.

Step 3: Implement steam recovery initiatives

Steam recovery initiatives, also known as wet-side gas optimisation, can help reduce your gas spend and lower emissions. Steam recovery initiatives focus on capturing and reusing the otherwise-wasted heat energy from steam generated during operational processes.

During the steam recovery process, steam is captured and piped back into your operational processes. This eliminates the need to heat new cold water and, by doing so, lowers your gas consumption as well as the spend associated with gas wastage.

Step 4: Reduce heat waste

Dry-side gas optimisation, which includes heat recovery initiatives and combustion optimisation, can also help reharness excess energy generated from operational processes and lower your gas consumption and spend. As an example, combustion optimisation measures aim to achieve complete combustion, where the entire fuel molecule reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂0) as the primary by-products. This process means that a higher percentage of the gas is converted into usable heat energy, minimising waste.

Heat recovery initiatives capture heat waste from industrial processes or exhaust gases so it can be reused in operational areas such as preheating water or providing space heating, to name a few examples.

Step 5: Consider alternative energy sources

If you’re looking to take your gas efficiency optimisation a step further, you could consider how alternative energy sources, such as biomass, biofuels, hydrogen or electricity, could be incorporated into your operational processes. For example, electrifying your gas assets allows you to utilise renewable energy sources with traditionally gas-powered equipment, giving you flexibility to choose energy source to use depending on what is most cost-effective at the time.

Our expert gas efficiency team can provide insight and help you to better understand how alternative energy sources could be beneficial for your business.

Shell Energy can also help assess your eligibility to secure funding for electrification projects.

Get started with gas efficiency for yourself

Shell Energy has unique capabilities and expertise in helping businesses like yours to unlock the most value from their gas optimisation projects, on every stage from exploration to implementation to ongoing optimisation and maintenance. To get started, click here to get in touch with a member of our expert team or call us on 13 23 76.