Industrial buildings encompass a wide variety of building types, including the following building categories—chemical, metal, paper products, rubber and plastics, and food processing.

Unlike other sectors, industrial energy use is frequently determined by the specific industrial process. However, some important energy uses are common across industry types, such as motor drives, steam systems and compressed air. As a result, industrial energy efficiency opportunities exist in both process-specific systems and other energy using systems. 

Industrial energy systems such as motors, steam, compressed air, pumps, fans, process heating, combustion and combined heat and power account for about 80 percent of industrial energy use. Improving the efficiency of these systems can yield large energy and cost savings.