As the Department of Energy moves into the next phase of its Save Energy Now campaign, states, too, are revisiting, revising, and re-invigorating their own industrial energy efficiency strategies and programs-often spurred by state-wide climate action plans.

In this paper, we present the recent experiences of Colorado in designing and launching an industrial energy efficiency challenge and recognition program. Stemming from Colorado Governor Bill Ritter's Climate Action Plan to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent from their 2005 levels by 2020, our new industrial effort is based on encouraging industrial firms in Colorado to make voluntary commitments to reduce energy intensity, giving them training and technical assistance to identify and implement energy-saving efforts, and highlighting their successes.

Some of our own challenges in designing this program include how to motivate both facility managers and upper management to work together in reducing energy intensity, how to best take advantage of rising energy costs and concerns of an unstable economy to catalyze plant equipment upgrades, and how to stimulate project implementation while avoiding site assessments that are "put on a shelf for later" in this period of economic contraction and limited investment capability. In addition to examining the above items, we discuss our initial efforts to develop a memorandum of understanding that companies would agree to, sign up companies as participants, collect baseline data, and develop services that respond to industry needs.