1. Prefer Electric Machines or Fuel with Climate-Neutral Diesel
Electric machines can make a significant contribution to reducing energy consumption on the job site. However, it's not always possible to use electric vehicles for construction projects – especially for large machinery. In such cases, it's advisable to fuel construction equipment at least with fuels like biodiesel or our CO2-neutral diesel – this too can help meaningfully reduce energy consumption.
2. The Right Transport of Building Materials
General machine deployment can also be made more efficient. Construction processes like transporting building materials from A to B often consume a lot of energy. However, significant savings can be made during transport. Not all building materials need to be transported with a large machine – often a smaller machine will do. So the rule is: check your machine inventory twice before using a machine that's too large. At klarx, you'll find more than 530,000 construction machines and equipment and can outfit your entire job site.
Discover our machine selection
3. Maintain Machines & Reduce Fuel Consumption
Fuel consumption shouldn't be overlooked either. Many construction companies consume too much fuel, such as diesel or petrol – electricity consumption can also be very high. Machines with high fuel consumption should be used efficiently: only regularly serviced machines guarantee lower fuel consumption. An analysis and overview of all machines is important to identify inefficient machines and reduce their use.
4. Choose the Right Machine
Another decisive factor regarding energy efficiency is machine size: larger machines usually consume more fuel. To promote energy efficiency, it makes sense to choose smaller machines where possible.
Our tip: evaluate the right machine size in advance so deployment can run more efficiently.
5. Raise Awareness Among Job Site Staff
Job site staff also need to be made aware of this issue. After all, only those who know how to save resources on the job site and what certain practices can achieve will apply them themselves. Targeted training on energy efficiency can make sense here. It's definitely worth taking the time for training. Because in the long run, you can expect savings in both energy and costs.
6. Use Short Transport Routes for Rental Equipment
It's not just about using the right machine for transporting materials from A to B, but also about keeping transport distances short when renting construction equipment. Why rent a construction machine 60 kilometers away from the job site when klarx can do it more efficiently? Thanks to our own logistics centers and more than 5,100 partner stations, we guarantee not only availability but also the shortest route from the machine to the job site. Additionally, our machines from the logistics center are fueled with climate-neutral diesel.
Read now: Sustainability in the Construction Industry
7. Analyze and Optimize Downtime
Often construction machine engines keep running unmanned on job sites even though they're not being used. This leads to unnecessary energy consumption and theoretically avoidable emissions. klarx can use telematics units to process and evaluate data on downtime for machines from the logistics center, so that operating times can be optimized. More information on "Telematics units at klarx" is available here.
8. Energy Efficiency Through Renewable Energy
Renewable energies use energy forms that renew from the environment, such as solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, or geothermal energy. A construction project is "sustainable" when it fulfills its sociocultural function and its creation and operation throughout its lifecycle involve resource efficiency in both ecological and economic terms (Source). At klarx, we support the construction of ground-mounted systems throughout Germany with machines from our logistics center. This means our customers build approximately 1 GW of ground-mounted systems annually with us, which leads to significantly greater energy savings in the traditional sense.
Energy Savings Matter for the Future
Since ecological awareness – also in the political sense – is being given an increasingly important role, energy efficiency is crucial for your job site. Good energy efficiency can affect future decisions about which companies receive construction contracts: energy management can be a deciding factor alongside performance and reliability when awarding construction projects.
