Hardwood Industries’ interest in identifying and reducing energy waste led to its participation in Energy Trust of Oregon’s Strategic Energy Management (SEM) offering. Although its SEM engagement is still underway, Hardwood’s willingness to embrace Energy Trust’s SEM recommendations have already led to notable energy savings.

Hardwood began its SEM engagement in late 2018 with a “treasure hunt,” in which a group of Hardwood employees and their SEM support team scoured Hardwood’s Sherwood site to find areas of energy waste, after which they prioritized the identified energy-saving projects. The SEM treasure hunt yielded 53 energy-saving opportunities. In less than a year, 20 of the 53 projects were completed.

Not only is Hardwood accruing significant energy cost savings through SEM, it is also on track to receive cash incentives. Hardwood plans to turn its SEM savings and incentives into employee rewards to acknowledge their efforts in identifying and implementing changes through SEM.

Chad Bentley, operations manager at Hardwood, lauded the value of SEM in helping Hardwood improve its energy efficiency. “Through SEM education, we could see clearly through our energy data that shutting down equipment and starting it back up actually saves us energy and dollars,” Bentley said.