Industrial Energy Management Market to Grow 21.6% a Year to 2020, Study Says

The U.S. market for industrial energy management software and services will rise from $960 million in 2011 to $5.6 billion by 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 21.6 percent, according to Pike Research.

Industrial and manufacturing companies use close to one-third of all the energy consumed in the U.S. and the sector must take additional measures to ensure it remains cost-competitive on a global scale, according to Energy Management Systems for Industrial Markets. A range of economic and market forces – including the expected economic recovery and increased scrutiny by consumers, shareholders, and other stakeholders of businesses’ sustainability initiatives – are also changing the climate around energy management initiatives. Just as quality was a major competitive issue in the 1980s and 1990s, so is energy management today, the report says.

The most energy-intensive companies have already had high adoption rates for energy management initiatives and their portion of this market will see only modest growth in the years to 2020, Pike says. Meanwhile mid- to large-size, non-energy-intensive industrial and manufacturing companies will account for most of the growth in energy management software and services.

Small manufacturing companies, while they significantly outnumber all other industrial and manufacturing firms, will remain an underserved market. This is partially because they tend to be low consumers of energy, and partially because of their limited financial and human resources, Pike says.

The vendor landscape is fragmented, the report says. Pike projects that many of the standalone software companies will have a harder time penetrating the market or gaining market share against some of the more experienced players and longtime participants, and the ever-increasing complexity of energy-related projects will benefit full service providers, energy engineering and consulting companies, and energy service companies.

In March, energy management company Ecova released data showing that its customers’ energy intensity – measured by kWh per square foot – declined by 8 percent from Q1 2009 to Q3 2011. Big box retailers, those with floor space of 25,000 square feet or more, saw their energy intensity fall by 10 percent over that time period, the largest percentage fall of any sector, according to Ecova’s white paper, A Big Data Look At Energy Trends: 2009-2011.