Perhaps this is due to his unusual hobby – growing carnivorous plants in a tropical greenhouse he built himself. Tomáš understands energy and talks about it with an enthusiasm that immediately captivates people. And it is precisely this energy that is now driving him forward in a task that is of fundamental importance for the entire MND group: setting up a new energy consumption monitoring and management system so that the company can save considerable sums of money in the future.

The man who has all the energy under his control

The position of energy manager at MND existed before, but it had a much narrower scope and focused primarily on electricity. However, with the transition to the ISO 50001 standard, Tomáš's role has expanded significantly. He now has complete oversight of the consumption of all types of energy – from electricity to gas and water to fuel. As he himself says, he is half energy engineer and half energy manager.

His job is not just to record numbers, but to look for savings opportunities across the entire group on an industrial scale. So it's not just about replacing light bulbs, but systematically searching for solutions for the largest and most demanding technologies.

"Of course, I proceed from the largest consumers to the smallest. If we have to burn gas somewhere, I investigate whether there is a possibility of capturing it, what the costs would be and how it could be used subsequently. If we have to heat oil or natural gas somewhere, I ask myself whether it would be possible to do so with a heat pump instead of direct heating cables. Can the cogeneration units that are currently being built be put to better use?" This is how Tomáš describes the questions he is trying to answer.

And the most fundamental question is: how much can actually be saved?

"I estimate 10-15 per cent within three years. We're talking about optimisation. If we consider larger investment projects, I believe consumption could be reduced by up to 25-35 per cent," says the chief energy engineer. At the same time, however, he emphasises that this is a long-term process. First, it is necessary to set up data collection processes, find out exactly where consumption occurs, propose measures, calculate their return on investment, implement them, and only then realise them. And then wait for new results.

The basic prerequisite is to obtain high-quality and detailed data. The MND Group has an annual energy consumption of 142 GWh, which includes MND, a. s., Energy Storage, Gas Storage, Drilling and Services, Gas To Power, MND Energie, as well as FVE Orlová and FVE Tichá. This includes not only electricity, but also gas, which accounts for the largest share of consumption, and fuels such as diesel and petrol.

Gas is consumed in large quantities mainly by storage facilities, whose compressors have an efficiency of only 39 per cent. "The question for the future is whether it would be possible to consider electrifying some of the operations. More than half of the energy remains unused today," Tomáš outlines.

MND, a. s., has higher gas consumption, while MND Drilling and Services mainly consumes fuel due to the diesel generators needed for drilling. MND Energie, on the other hand, mainly uses electricity.

Overall, the group consumes energy commodities worth CZK 210 million per year, so savings can have a really significant effect.

Tomáš's goal is to fully automate data collection. Many processes are still carried out manually, which slows down work and carries the risk of errors. Modern software can identify inefficient operations or poorly configured electricity consumption, which can unnecessarily increase costs, such as for reserved power.

"I am currently selecting software that would be able to monitor this. Artificial intelligence will do a lot of useful work on an ongoing basis. But at the end of the process, there must be a person who evaluates everything and makes the appropriate decisions," he adds.

When talking to Tomáš, it is immediately apparent how passionate he is about his work. He talks enthusiastically about the possibilities for savings, showing graphs and tables that he compiles himself. He has a detailed overview of the consumption of various commodities not only across companies, but also across their individual centres. And it was this attention to detail that led him to energy long ago – thanks to carnivorous plants.

A tropical greenhouse as an energy laboratory

Tomáš has been growing carnivorous plants since childhood and gradually dreamed of a large, year-round heated greenhouse. When he found out how energy-intensive the available models would be, he decided to build his own greenhouse. He used the knowledge he had acquired while studying at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology, and after five years, a fully automated, low-energy tropical greenhouse, heated all year round, was created, which today collects data and is constantly being improved.

"I played around a lot with energy there, working on balancing temperatures, thinking about how to store heat in water, for example, and then recover it," he explains.

Tomáš's greenhouse is no small structure – it measures eight and a half metres by eight metres and is six and a half metres high. It grows papayas, bananas, cocoa beans and dozens of other exotic plants.

When Tomáš goes on holiday to the tropics, he asks local farmers how to grow things, examines the soil, humidity and other parameters. He also passes on his passion to those around him – he asks friends travelling to exotic destinations to bring back seedlings, which he then tries to grow. The last one was a Ceylon cinnamon tree.

His dream is to one day have a large greenhouse right next to his house, where he can relax in winter. "I don't like winter. The advantage here is that if you want to go to the tropics, you don't have to travel halfway around the world. You just step into the greenhouse and you have your own little piece of paradise. I want to play the sounds of the rainforest there, because being surrounded by nature like that is the most relaxing thing for me," he says.

In the future, he would like to build turnkey greenhouses as part of his own business.

In addition to his work at MND and his plant world, Tomáš is also active in municipal energy – he worked as an energy engineer for the town of Dubňany and is a member of the Town Council's Energy and Construction Committee. There, too, he tries to find savings and effective solutions, which are often limited by finances, but that is precisely why it has taught him to take a creative approach.

He is also a member of the Czechoslovak Legionnaires' Community and is interested in the military history of the First Republic.

Tomáš brings not only professional knowledge and a systematic approach to MND, but also a great deal of personal enthusiasm and inspiration. He is a person who can apply the experience gained from his tropical greenhouse and from working for the town of Dubňany to complex industrial operations. And if he succeeds in achieving his goals, the energy management of the entire group will be significantly more efficient.

Energy is simply something that Tomáš Báborský really understands – and knows how to harness.