Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, announced that its Narrows, Virginia cellulose acetate tow manufacturing facility has been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for achieving the ENERGY STAR Challenge for Industry (the Challenge) in 2021.

The Challenge is a call-to-action to improve energy efficiency of America’s manufacturers. By taking the Challenge, manufacturing sites set a goal to reduce their energy intensity by 10 percent within five years. Although the Challenge is a U.S.-centric initiative, Celanese’s facilities outside the U.S. participate in the Challenge as part of the Company’s commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

“As a result of energy-efficiency technologies and improvements, the Narrows facility has reduced Scope 1 energy and Scope 2 GHG net emissions by approximately 25,000 tCO2e annually from 2016-2020,” said Jon Mortimer, Senior Vice President of Global Manufacturing for Celanese. “Across our manufacturing facilities, we are finding innovative ways to reduce energy intensity as we focus on a 10 percent energy intensity reduction goal by 2030. Narrows is our fifth site enterprise-wide to achieve the Challenge recognition to date. This significant milestone demonstrates Celanese’s commitment to strong energy management practices that produce positive results for the environment, our customers and our communities.”

The facility used a variety of energy-efficiency approaches which yielded a reduction of their energy intensity by 10.1 percent within five years.