Texas Industries of the Future (IOF) was established in 2001 with funding from the US Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy through contracts with the Texas State Energy Conservation Office. The purpose of the Texas Industries of the Future program is to facilitate the development, demonstration and adoption of advanced technologies and adoption of best practices that reduce industrial energy usage, emissions, and associated costs, resulting in improved competitive performance for Texas industries. The bottom line for Texas industry is savings in energy and materials, cost-effective environmental compliance, increased productivity, reduced waste, and enhanced product quality.

The state program leverages the programs and tools of the federal Department of Energy’s industrial technologies program, which focuses on energy intensive industries.

Texas Industries of the Future has worked extensively with the chemical manufacturing and refining sectors, because these sectors use more than 75% of the industrial energy use in Texas. However, we have also worked with small to large manufacturers from sectors as diverse as food processing to semi-conductor manufacturing.

The Chemical and Refining Sector strategic plan is available here...>>

View the Texas Industries of the Future case study here...>>

Benefits for the State, the Economy and the Environment

Builds industry, university and government partnerships to target and solve pressing technology problems within key industries and across industries.

Provides a forum for identifying longer-term technology issues of interest to Texas industries.

• Positions Texas to successfully compete for national funding for technology research, demonstration and commercialization.
• Provides increased access to technology resources of the national Department of Energy and national labs.
• Increases access to the national Best Practices tools and trainings, tailored to the needs of Texas facilities.
• Provides a forum for feeding back ideas to the US DOE on programs of interest to industries in Texas.

What We’ve Accomplished

Since 2001, the program has organized 48 workshops, forums, roundtables and conferences, with a total of over 2,300 attendees, on energy efficiency topics. A summary of program impacts presents the results of an evaluation of the program from 2001 through August 2007. Texas IOF Program Impacts Summary 2007

The 2007 evaluation of the Texas IOF program highlighted accomplishments in several areas:

• 59 out of the top 195 or 30 % of the largest industrial sites have staff that attended Texas IOF events. The goal was to reach 25 % of the largest industrial plants in Texas.
• Best Practice workshops are estimated to have saved 1.791 Trillion Btus as a result of attendees using the software and implementing energy saving projects back at their plants.
• The Texas IOF manual and calculator to help small and medium sized manufacturers assess energy savings opportunities is in use by the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center, which reports identifying savings of $660,000 at 9 facilities, with replication opportunity at another 13 sites.
• Thirty of the 200 sites that signed up in 2006 to participate in the US DOE Save Energy Now plant assessment program were from Texas. This is the largest number from any state.
• The program has been a successful two-way conduit for information on energy efficiency between plants in Texas and US DOE headquarters. In 2005, member companies on the Texas IOF chemical manufacturing and refining steering committee proposed the development of a certification program for energy efficiency at the plant level. The idea was refined by the committee and submitted to the Texas State Energy Conservation Office, which provided funding in 2007 for a pilot program in Texas. During the proposal development, US DOE became interested in this concept and the Texas pilot project was incorporated into a national effort based in the Industrial Technologies Program at US DOE under the “Superior Energy Performance” banner. The focus of the certification program is implementation of an energy management system standard, energy system assessment standards, and achieving a specified level of performance and continuous improvement. The program is currently under development.

Background on Organization

The Texas Industries of the Future is a program of the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources at the University of Texas at Austin. The Texas Industries of the Future is funded by grants from the US Department of Energy, under contracts through the State Energy Conservation Office, as well as project funding from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the US Environmental Protection Agency

Texas Industries of the Future was honored with the 2008 Industrial Energy Technology Conference award in May 2008 in New Orleans. The program was recognized for its ongoing work with Texas’ industrial energy users. Through 48 workshops, forums, roundtables, and conferences, The Texas Industries of the Future program resulted in energy savings of 1.79 trillion Btus/year among workshop attendees. Kathey Ferland, Program Manager, accepted the award from Dr. Dan Turner, director of the Industrial Energy Technology Conference.