Manufacturing Energy and Carbon Footprints

Learn More About Energy and Carbon Footprints

Understanding Energy and Carbon Footprints

Learn how to read the footprints and understand energy use and carbon emissions in
your industry sector.

Scope of Footprints
Details of the industry sectors included by NAICS code.

Assumptions and Definitions

The assumptions used to create the footprints, such as the efficiencies of equipment
and energy systems found inside a typical manufacturing facility, and a glossary of
terms.

References
The publications used as data sources for the footprints.
Manufacturing energy and carbon footprints map fuel energy consumption and losses,
as well as greenhouse gas emissions from fuel consumption, for fifteen individual U.S.
manufacturing sectors (representing 94% of all manufacturing energy use) and for the
entire manufacturing sector. By providing energy consumption and emissions figures
broken down by end use, the footprints allow for comparisons of energy use and
emissions sources both within and across sectors.
The footprints portray a large amount of information for each sector, including:
• Comparison of the energy generated offsite and transferred to facilities versus
that generated onsite
• Nature and amount of energy consumed by end use within facilities
• Magnitude of the energy lost both outside and inside facility boundaries
• Magnitude of the greenhouse gas emissions released due to the combustion of
fuel.
Energy losses indicate opportunities to improve efficiency by implementing energy
management best practices, upgrading energy systems, and developing new
technologies.
Footprints are available below for each sector. Data is presented in two levels of detail.
The first page provides a high-level snapshot of the offsite and onsite energy flow, and
the second page shows the detail for onsite generation and end use of energy. The
energy data is primarily provided by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy
Information Administration's (EIA's) Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey
(MECS), and therefore reflects consumption in the year 2006, when the survey was
last completed.