Analysis of Relationships among Organizational Barriers to Energy Efficiency Improvement: A Case Study in Indonesia's Steel Industry

The aim of this paper is to analyze and rank the managerial-organizational barriers to energy efficiency improvement from an industry perspective. To that end, this study utilizes the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology to identify the contextual relationships among the barriers. In a focus group discussion forum, five practitioners from the steel industry were consulted to identify these mutual linkages. The results indicated that five of the eight barriers proposed are in the linkage category. These barriers include that the energy manager or people in charge of energy management lack influence, there are higher priorities to production activity, there is management resistance to change, there is inadequate management capacity, and there are conflicts of interest within the organization. The management should focus more attention on these barriers, because they have both high driving power and dependency. The findings are intended to help managers from manufacturing sectors identify key barriers and thus develop strategic plans to address these issues.