The Hanson Aggregates plant in Downingtown, a division of Lehigh Hanson, Inc., has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Challenge for Industry for reducing its energy intensity by 10.7 percent within two years.

The Downingtown plant is the third Lehigh Hanson aggregates facility to earn the distinction in the past two years.

The EPA is working with individual manufacturing sites and their parent companies to fight climate change through improved energy efficiency.

The Downingtown plant was able to reduce its energy intensity by taking a hands-on approach to assessing the facility’s energy consumption and developing an ambitious but realistic strategy to achieve its reduction goal. Plant management, with support from personnel at the company’s technical competency center in Irving, Tex., completed a comprehensive review of the major systems at the plant, including crushers, conveyors, pumps, screens, feeders, fans, heating and air compressors.

Based on their findings, a number of energy-related projects were planned and implemented. The projects concentrated on optimizing the pumping systems, demand management strategies, minimizing parasitic loads, as well as process improvements. The plant shifted certain production tasks to reduce loads at peak demand times and set monthly demand control targets.

“We are extremely proud of achieving the ENERGY STAR Challenge for Industry,” said Randy Miles, Downingtown plant manager. “By really digging into the processes that used the most energy, we were able to develop and implement a reduction plan that focused on optimizing energy usage at every stage of production.”

Lehigh Hanson currently has eight additional aggregate facilities participating in the ENERGY STAR Challenge for Industry and expects more of its plants to join the program in the near future. The firm was founded in 1897 as the Lehigh Cement Co. Now based in Irving, Lehigh Hanson, Inc. and its affiliated companies were acquired by the Heidelberg Cement Group in 2007.

Heidelberg Cement is a global market leader in aggregates, employing about 52,000 people at nearly 2,500 locations in more than 40 countries.

Lehigh Hanson also just announced that it ranked 43rd on this year’s InformationWeek Elite 100 – a list of the top business technology innovators in the U.S. Lehigh Hanson was singled out for implementing a remote ticketing system at one of its aggregate quarries. It was ranked the top company in the construction and engineering industry. The full list is here: http://www.informationweek.com/elite100.

Links: www.energystar.gov/challenge www.lehighhanson.com