Industrial energy efficiency service as sustainable business

The paper presents an important means how production or economic growth can be achieved in a more sustainable way. It will be shown that detailed energy audits carried out in the industrial sector are the fundamental first step to come to a less energy-intense production process and in doing so to approach what is commonly described as ''sustainability''. It will come out that energy efficiency is the means to industrial environmental protection and -what is of great significance- is one of the few possibilities in the industrial sector to come to economic viable investments in protecting the environment. Furthermore, the background and the actual work of the Tata Energy Research Institute/TERI and the Indo-German Energy Efficiency Project/IG-EEP in Bangalore will be presented as a possibility to run a sustainable business by offering Industrial Energy Efficiency Services. Finally, it will come out that energy efficiency is a means for sustainability in a double sense: energy efficiency gives the possibility to run a sustainable business, so to say a business that can live from the returns of the services it offers, and second energy efficiency is an important contribution to come to a more sustainable (energy) future. That is what makes energy efficiency so attractive.