Toward reliable industrial energy-efficiency benchmarking: Field evidence from four sectors in Türkiye

This paper presents field evidence from the Türkiye Industrial Energy Efficiency Outlook Project, conducted in collaboration with the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD) and Özyeğin University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Economy (CEEE/EÇEM). The study analyzes 2023 operational data from ten volunteer companies in four industrial sectors: casting, fertilizer, dairy, and insulation. Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) was used as the primary comparative metric, while sector-specific system boundaries were developed through a participatory process involving industry workshops and process-flow mapping. Because participation was voluntary, the cohort may over-represent firms with higher energy-management maturity; therefore, the reported SEC values are interpreted as field-based diagnostic indicators rather than sector-wide national benchmarks. Within the participating cohort, SEC appeared sensitive to production capacity utilization and facility-specific technological characteristics, whereas no consistent climate–SEC relationship was observed. The analysis also showed that facility-gate SEC can obscure important differences arising from product heterogeneity, raw-material processing levels, co-generation treatment, auxiliary energy use, and data confidentiality constraints. In particular, steam generation in dairy facilities and acid production in fertilizer facilities emerged as candidate areas for more detailed sub-process investigation. The findings demonstrate the practical value of verified operational field data for developing more reliable energy-efficiency benchmarking protocols in Türkiye. They also indicate that future benchmarking efforts should prioritize sub-process metering, transparent boundary definitions, privacy-aware data-sharing mechanisms, and company-initiated data collection frameworks to support realistic industrial decarbonization programs.