Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed Excel-based spreadsheet tools called BEST: Benchmarking and Energy Saving Tool for use by industries to benchmark a plant's energy intensity to "best practice" and to identify energy-efficiency options that can be implemented. Data on annual energy use by fuel and characteristics of major production process at the facility is used by the spreadsheet tool to compare the plant to global best practice. "Best practice" is defined as the plant with the most energy, and, for certain industries, water-efficient, commercially-available technologies for each step of the manufacturing process, taking into account the variables entered by the user (such as product and feedstock mix or location of the plant). Users input this readily-available information on production and energy consumption at their plant and BEST compares its performance to best-practice.

Once the plant has been benchmarked, BEST provides an interactive menu of energy-efficiency technologies and measures contained in the spreadsheet tool, allowing the user to choose those that could be implemented in their plant. For each measure, the tool provides a technology description, energy savings, costs incurred and simple payback period for that plant. For the package of measures chosen by the user, BEST calculates a revised benchmark value, showing how much closer the plant will be to best practice once the measures are implemented, and what the costs and savings would be for the entire package.

Currently, the BEST tool has been developed for the steel industry and for wineries. Initial research related to development of BEST for the cement industry has been funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star for Industry program. This effort resulted in the identification of over 50 energy-efficiency technologies and measures that can be applied to both wet and dry kiln cement plants. U.S. EPA's Office of Technology Cooperation and Assistance has provided seed funding for initial development of BEST-Cement for use in a project in China. Berkeley Lab will be working in collaboration with the Institute of Technical Information for the Building Materials Industry of China to develop the tool.

See also: BEST-Winery