From wasted heat to one billion in annual savings: 10 stories of industrial energy efficiency
At a fly-ash brick manufacturing plant in Vietnam, exhaust gas from the fly ash and sand drying furnace was leaving the system at 120-130°C — hot enough to damage the bag filters downstream.
To manage this, the plant cooled the gas by mixing in cold outside air. Meanwhile, right next door, the boiler system burned fuel every day just to heat incoming feedwater.
The problem: the hot exhaust from the dryer was being discarded entirely, while the boiler kept spending extra fuel to do the same job — heating water — from scratch.
The solution: a continuous circulating heat exchanger, installed to capture that discarded heat and use it to preheat the boiler's feedwater instead.
The result: nearly 700 tons of fuel saved per year, over VND 1 billion in cost cuts, and payback just above 1.5 years.
This is just one of ten real-world stories drawn from more than 265 solutions identified through the Voluntary Agreement Scheme (VAS), supported by the DEPP3 Programme.
Resource: DEPP Program.
The most compelling cases have now been compiled into a “
Set of Energy Efficiency Project Leaflets", spanning some of Vietnam's most energy-intensive industries: steel, brewing, wood/MDF, construction materials, mechanical engineering, ceramics, paper, textiles, and seafood processing.
Each leaflet presents one concrete solution — from furnace optimization and waste heat recovery to fuel switching and industrial refrigeration upgrades — backed by financial data (NPV, IRR, payback period) alongside the non-energy benefits that come with it.
At the time of publication, some of these projects have already been invested, several are currently under implementation, and others remain at the feasibility study stage, awaiting approval.
Taken together, the set makes one thing clear: energy efficiency projects deliver real business value.
How can you use this set of leaflets?
- For energy managers and enterprise owners: a source of ideas to benchmark against your own operations and identify where energy efficiency gains might be hiding in your plant.
- For energy auditors: ready-made solution examples backed by real-world figures, to advise and convince clients faster.
- For local authorities: concrete examples to cite in training sessions or outreach activities promoting energy-saving solutions and technologies to enterprises in your locality.
The full set of 10 leaflets is available here. [
link]
DEPP3 PROGRAM
21 projects
13 industries
15 provinces
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