Energy resources use has been considered as a key component of sustainable development. Data related to global, regional, state, sector, industry and process demonstrate that a significant reduction of energy resources for a given production rate in manufacturing processes requires an introduction of transformational technologies at the process level, propagating the impact to higher scales, leading not just to a gradual improvement of traditional technologies but to more sustainable development. The study offers two approaches to the formulation of the limits of energy use in the context of sustainable development. The first is to construct a map of key selected sustainable development metrics that would include energy use, economic and social aspects of the individual economy. The second view offers a close-up insight into an energy use at a process level, at the technical domain where actual energy transformations take place. Case study for a Controlled atmosphere brazing process is provided to investigate the gap between the theoretical minimum and actual energy used for the process. It has been demonstrated that the energy use, associated with a manufactured product is number of orders of magnitude smaller than the actual energy resources use for the actual process under consideration.