Emerson (News - Alert) Process Management, a business of Emerson, has launched its Smart Energy Initiative, a program designed to combine its industrial energy expertise with energy management technologies to enable customers to leverage renewable fuels, reduce energy costs, and bring down emissions.

"With industrial manufacturers consuming an estimated 50 percent of the world's energy, combined with rising fossil fuel prices and global mandates for reduced emissions, our customers need more than incremental efficiencies in energy management," said Steve Sonnenberg, president of Emerson Process Management, in a statement.

"With our Smart Energy Initiative, Emerson is introducing a fundamentally new platform that can change energy economics globally," Sonnenberg added.

Emerson is trying to tap a $2 billion market. It will be a big opportunity for the company as refineries, manufacturers, and other industrial customers will be adopting lower-cost fuels.

Energy comprises 30 percent or more of a facility's operating costs. Facts such as the increasing cost for fossil fuels and new global emissions mandates are prompting industrial customers to look at waste fuels, biomass, and other renewable sources as a solution to these challenges.

The focus of Emerson's new Industrial Energy Group will be on modernizing and improving the performance of powerhouses, the onsite utilities that provide steam and electricity to power industrial operations, while also improving how the manufacturing process consumes energy.

This is a significant move for the industry that focuses on carbon emissions. As per the European Renewable Energy Directive 20/20/20, industries need to bring down greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and increase the share of renewable fuels in the European Union's energy mix by 20 percent by the year 2020.

Recently, Emerson Network Power (News - Alert) announced that it is joining a group of companies that are providing technologies and solutions for a green data center being built in Malaysia by Teliti International, a Malaysian IT services provider.