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Given the self-declared energy and environmental protection objectives of many car manufacturers responsible companies must use energy-efficient production technologies. The running costs of production sites are a decisive factor in the overhead of automotive production. Therefore, it is important for many operators to reduce those costs in a sustainable way. For this purpose, they attempt to reduce both the energy consumption costs and CO 2 emissions of production systems. However, most components of the energy costs are determined during the very early phases of the product creation process. To achieve an estimation of the energy consumption in this early planning stage, a new suitable forecasting method is required. Therefore, this paper presents an approach for determining the prospective energy consumption by using Methods-Energy Measurement combined with defined energy reference cycles for manufacturing technologies. With this approach, key performance indicators are defined, and the production technologies are divided into basic energy consumers. The average energy values will be determined empirically by using the defined energy reference cycles. With these data, the energy demands for different scenarios are calculated. Thereby, it is possible to estimate the potential energy consumption of complex manufacturing cells. The designed method is validated within a case study of a modern automotive body shop. In summary, the approach contributes to identify and realize sustainable solutions in advance and thus increase the profitability of a factory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The rapid growth of Chinese economy has tremend-ously stimulated the expansion of energy consumption. The structure of energy consumption in China is featured with the coal domination. Air pollution is becoming increasingly severe and causes enormous economic losses. As a result, we are confronted with the extremely arduous task to balance energy consumption and environmental protection. In order to avoid the situation that its rampant environmental pollution problem will worsen before it gets better, Chinese government has put high emphasis on the problem. The efforts made by Chinese government, including energy consumption structure improve-ment and control measures to air pollution, have been introduced and discussed in this paper. China possesses very abundant renewable energies such as wind, solar, geothermal and tidal. Applications of renewable energies, especially solar energy, can coordinate and improve the relationship between energy consumption and environmental protection. Therefore, Chinese government should make more efforts to set up priority of development for renewable energies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]