General Mills Meets DOE's Energy Efficiency Goal Four Years Ahead Of Schedule

(RTTNews) - The U.S. Department of Energy or DOE said Friday that General Mills, Inc. (GIS) achieved the federal agency's "Better Plants Challenge" goal four years ahead of plan, with a total efficiency improvement of 20.4 percent since fiscal year 2012.

In 2012, General Mills set a 10-year goal, from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2022, to improve energy efficiency in its 26 largest U.S.-based plants by 20 percent.

"We are honored to be recognized by the DOE for our progress to improve our efficiency and reduce our energy consumption. We started this journey by looking within our walls back in 2005 and since then have extended our commitments and work across our entire value chain," said John Church, chief supply chain officer and global business solutions officer at General Mills.

General Mills' noted that its 20 percent improvement represents a total of over 2 Million MMBTU's of energy - combined electricity and natural gas - over the six years.

In fiscal 2018, the company completed more than 60 energy efficiency and reduction projects. These improvement projects saved over 12 million kWh, delivered $4.8 million in cost savings, and avoided nearly 6.000 metric tons of CO2e of GHG emissions.

General Mills said that as part of its greenhouse gas emissions or GHG reduction goal, each of its production facilities has a target to reduce energy use by 2 percent annually, normalized to production. During fiscal 2018, this rate decreased by 2 percent compared to the prior year, while absolute energy use decreased by 7 percent.