For some considerable time, energy intensive sectors of industry have been checking their energy consumption, so as to utilize potential savings for cost reduction and to comply with stricter emission limits. More recently, medium-sized companies without noticeably high energy consumption are also facing the question how and at what price modem, resource safeguarding and Low emission energy concepts can be used by them. The development of an energy concept is shown, using as the example a company from the metalworking industry.