1. Background

Need we remind you? Energy is vital. It is the driving force behind all activity, and without it, everything stops. However, the events of recent decades remind us that resources are not inexhaustible, and that the decisions made at a certain point in time to exploit mainly fossil fuels have their limits, even if regular announcements of new deposits or potential discoveries push those limits further back. Similarly, the apocryphal quote attributed to chemist Antoine Lavoisier, "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed," would give us hope that we will never run out of energy. We must face reality: energy is lost and wasted in significant proportions in the various energy uses that a company implements to produce. It is also lost in the means of energy production and distribution to the end user. At each level of the energy chain, losses can be significant, and actions...