Changing the habits of people in both their personal and professional lives from energy wasters to energy conservers can generate exhortations to both idealism and to finance. Becoming more energy efficient makes sense, both for reducing emissions and for improving a company’s net profit. But changing habits is one of the hardest things for humans to do. Financial incentives often are powerful motivators toward rational behavior.

Leaving politics aside and just looking at the science, the February 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I titled “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,” describes progress in understanding of the human and natural drivers of climate change, observed climate change, climate processes and attribution, and estimates of projected future climate change. It builds upon past IPCC assessments and incorporates new findings from the past six years of research.

According to the report,

Of course, what this means for the planet a hundred years out is anyone’s guess, but many people feel that humans should take steps to reduce these gases in the atmosphere. One way to achieve a beneficial social goal is to give people and companies financial incentive to do something. One idea floating around is a “carbon market,” by which companies that can save energy (and therefore carbon emissions) can trade extra credits to those companies that lack current technology for doing so. The overall effect, so it is argued, would be beneficial to both companies and the environment.

Dinesh Paliwal, chairman and chief executive officer of  automation supplier ABB Inc., Norwalk, Conn., and group executive vice president of the Zurich-based ABB Group Ltd., offers these observations for tying social good to financial interests. “This Business and Climate Change Conference was a bipartisan effort to find common ground on how Congress might create a mandatory market-based greenhouse gas regulatory system to address the potential effects of climate change. For most companies and organizations, the answers to cutting emissions—and cutting energy costs—in this era of rising oil and gas prices are readily available. By applying certain cost-effective power and automation solutions, industry can achieve substantial energy savings today without waiting for the alternative fuels of the future. The benefit of smart energy usage is simple: Put every single kilowatt to work more efficiently and more productively—savings millions of tons of coal and petroleum products that are now being consumed to supply energy that is not truly needed.”

 A report from Boston analyst firm Industry Directions found that managers at production and engineering companies believe that they must act to offset the impact of high and volatile energy costs on their company’s margins. The company’s second annual study on the impact of energy costs on supply chain strategy, “The Energy Cost Factor: Transforming the Supply Chain to Offset Margin Squeeze,” found that the number of respondents who expect high energy prices to hurt their margins was four times higher in 2006 than in 2005.

“This year’s findings are significant because they demonstrate that companies are not simply bearing the brunt of high energy costs in the most obvious areas of the supply chain,” says William Brandel, Principal at Industry Directions. “Further, they now recognize that they cannot pass these higher costs on to customers or demand lower costs from suppliers.”

And indeed there are many ways to reduce the cost of running electric motors in manufacturing, from changing the motors themselves to how they are driven and to how they are connected to loads. Another way is to implement overall facility energy control, and even ...