Energy Treasure Hunts: Creating Momentum for Operational Excellence at Dura-Line
Authored by Brady Underwood, Global Environmental & Sustainability Manager
September 30, 2026
As a global manufacturer of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) conduit and accessories for the telecommunications, data center, and power markets, operational excellence and sustainability are part of our DNA.
Over the past two years, two of our manufacturing facilities participated in an Energy Treasure Hunt, which uncovered and implemented efficiency opportunities leading to $355,000 in energy savings. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the initiative empowered our teams to identify practical improvements that can reduce energy consumption and strengthen operational performance. But this effort was just the start of our journey to improve operational efficiency, save valuable energy, and work toward our ambitious sustainability targets.
As part of Orbia, one of our chief aims is to reduce our scope 1 and 2 emissions –– in large part purchased electricity –– by 47% by 2030. Emissions in these categories include the things that we don’t directly control but are necessary to maintain the operations of a world-class manufacturing network.
Our customers, too, care deeply about meeting their own sustainability targets, and we make every effort in our power to support these goals. One of the ways we can make the biggest impact in scopes 1 and 2 for ourselves and our customers is to become more energy efficient.
How it Started: Leveraging Our Federal and Public Sector Partnerships
In partnership with the Department of Energy (DOE) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of their Better Plants program, Dura-Line, along with several of our sister business groups, elected to participate in the Energy Treasure Hunt Program. Through the program, participants can apply for Treasure Hunt grants, equipment rentals, trainings, and more to support increasing energy efficiency at manufacturing sites.
What We Did: Deploying Experts to Survey Our Energy Consumption Habits
At two of our larger manufacturing facilities in McAlester, OK and Mountain Grove, MO, our plant managers and sustainability team worked with energy efficiency specialists from DOE and Oak Ridge and a dedicated account manager to track energy consumption at our larger sites. These experts, along with representatives from our business groups conducted comprehensive inspections of our participating sites, looking at energy use in power-hungry manufacturing equipment.
What We Found: Huge Opportunities for Energy Savings
Our participation in the program has uncovered big opportunities for Dura-Line and the other business groups to save energy. In many cases, the simple act of optimizing temperature settings on equipment like chillers, or pressure settings on air compressors, and even upgrading light fixtures made the difference that resulted in savings at our plants. In total, Dura-Line’s participating plants delivered approximately $203,000 in identified energy savings projects during 2025.
How We’re Using Our Learnings to Drive Energy Efficiency Across All Our Global Sites
Our sustainability team took the momentum and the data from the Energy Treasure Hunts program as proof of concept to create a baseline for our business group target of 5% global energy savings by 2030, compared to a 2025 baseline. To keep us accountable, our sustainability team used the data and lessons learned from McAlester and Mountain Grove treasure hunts to develop internal trainings and a standard, and are using DOE-developed software to quantify a wide array of energy consumption categories.
And perhaps most significantly, while we knew we wanted to use the results of the program to encourage more of our facilities to come on board and select an energy efficiency project to start in 2026, our team of experts discovered that many of our other sites were already tracking and optimizing their energy use, leading to additional savings. At about 75% adoption across 15 sites, the post-Energy Treasure Hunts effort has achieved about 5,000 MWh in annual savings –– about halfway toward our 2030 global energy savings target.