| Improving energy efficiency is one of the most effective means by which energy-intensive manufacturers (hereafter abbreviated as manufacturers) can address the "three big mountains", i.e., the rapid rise in energy costs, increasingly stringent environmental policies, and growing consumer awareness of environmental protection. In practice, manufacturers can design, construct and operate energy efficiency projects on their own to improve energy efficiency. This approach has some common characteristics:manufacturers mainly depend on their own strength, they provide project financing themselves, and they bear all the risks of projects but retain all the savings. For the sake of brevity, we will call this self-saving in this paper. However, there are many disadvantages when manufacturers choose self-saving. For example, the energy efficiency equipment chosen by manufacturers might not be suitable for their energy efficiency projects, or the projects designed by manufacturers might not be reasonable due to lack of knowledge and experience during project design phases. Other risks are that energy efficiency equipment may age rapidly due to uninformed use or that actual energy savings may not always match expected energy savings during the phase of operating the projects. To solve these problems, manufacturers can outsource energy services to energy service companies (ESCOs). Typically, the main form of energy services provided by ESCOs is energy performance contracting (EPC). There are two general types of performance contracts used in the ESCO industry: shared savings and guaranteed savings. Thus, in the energy management field, manufactures always have to make an important decision, i.e., facing different energy-saving modes, how to choose their optimal energy-saving modes in their favour. In this paper, we focus on one of important motivations for improving energy efficiency, i.e., reducing energy costs, and study the choice between energy-saving modes for those manufacturers facing self-saving and energy performance contracting. Specifically, three sub-problems are discussed as following:(1) the choice between energy-saving modes for a perfect monopoly manufacturer with time-varying demand; (2) the choice between energy-saving modes for a perfect monopoly manufacturer with endogenous unit savings; (3) the choice between energy-saving modes for competing energy-intensive manufactures.As the first step to study the choice between energy-saving modes by mathematical models, assuming that energy-saving policies are not considered, Chapter 2 uses a classic dynamic lot-sizing model as a basis and formulates dynamic lot-sizing models under three types of energy-saving modes, i.e., self-saving, shared savings and guaranteed savings. From model analysis, we study the choice between energy-saving modes for a perfect monopoly manufacturer with time-varing demand. The results show that:(1) facing self-saving and shared savings, the manufacturer will prefer the second mode to the first when the investment cost coefficient ratio of the energy service company to the manufacturer and the unit predicted savings rate of energy performance contracting are both small; otherwise, the manufacturer will prefer the first mode to the second; (2) facing shared savings and guaranteed savings, the manufacturer will prefer the first mode or the second mode when the unit predicted savings rate of energy performance contracting is small; otherwise, the manufacturer will prefer the first mode to the second mode; (3) facing self-saving and guaranteed savings, the choice between the manufacturer is similar to (1). Furthermore, the basic model is extended to energy tax situation and we analyze its impacts on the optimal choice of the manufacturer. The results show that energy tax has no impacts on the optimal choice of the manufacturer.Not similar to Chapter 2, unit savings always belongs to one of important decisions for those manufacturers or energy service companies when improving energy efficiency because they can optimize the economics of energy efficiency projects, i.e., endogenous unit savings. Then, Chapter 3 studies the choice between energy-saving modes for a perfect monopoly manufacturer under endogenous unit savings situation. First we formulate an optimization model of self-saving and a Stackelberg game model of shared savings. From model analysis, we show that:(1) the manufacturer will prefer the second mode to the first when the investment cost coefficient ratio of the energy service company to the manufacturer is small, otherwise, the manufacturer will prefer the first mode to the second. After that, the basic model is extended to four situations, i.e., pricing, demand uncertainty, unit actual savings uncertainty and considering non-energy benefits, respectively. The results show that:(2) the choice between energy-saving modes are same as the basic model under the first two situations; (3) under the third situation, the manufacturer introduces the third energy-saving mode, i.e., guaranteed savings, and we show that the manufacturer instead prefers guaranteed savings when the investment cost coefficient ratio is small; (4) when considering non-energy benefits, the results are greatly changed in some cases (see Section 3.4.4 or Section 5.1 for details).The results in Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 are from the assumption of perfect monopoly. However, those manufacturers always face fierce competition in the market. Considering this, Chapter 4 studies the choice between energy-saving modes for competing manufactures. First we develop a multi-stage game model based on the assumption that two manufactures are symmetric, and then analyze the equilibrium strategies on the choice between energy-saving modes for two manufactures. We show that:(1) there are two symmetric Nash equilibriums; two manufactures will prefer the second mode to the first when the investment cost coefficient ratio of the energy service company to the manufacturer is small; otherwise, two manufactures will prefer the first mode to the second. Furthermore, the basic model is extended to situations with asymmetric investment coefficients of two manufactures, asymmetric initial energy efficiencies of two manufactures, shared time less than the life cycle of the energy system. We show that:(2) under the first situation, there are symmetric and asymmetric Nash equilibriums; two manufactures will choose different energy-saving modes when the investment cost coefficient ratio of the energy service company to the manufacturer is a middle value in the first situation; the manufacturer which has a bigger investment coefficient prefers shared savings and another manufacturer chooses self-saving; the equilibrium strategies on the choice of energy-saving mode for two manufactures are similar to the basic model when the investment cost coefficient ratio is small or big; (3) the equilibrium strategies on the choice between energy-saving modes for two manufactures are not changed in the latter two situations.Finally, Chapter 5 concludes all the results. Besides, we indicate the directions of future research. |
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