Manufacturing of glass products requires high energy inputs due to high temperatures involved in melting glass and processing the glass melt. The high temperatures result in large amounts of dissipated heat via surfaces of aggregates and exhaust gas losses. To improve the energy efficiency of manufacturing of glass products, knowledge of the production process and associated energy fluxes is essential. Using thermodynamic laws, this doctoral thesis is the first to quantify the energy fluxes over the entire manufacturing process of container glass. By linking waste heat sources with heat sinks, new ways of process design with reduced energy use are identified. This includes minimizing exhaust gas losses by returning exhaust heat to the process, as well as approaches to utilize heat dissipated by cooling media. Most of energy required for manufacturing of glass containers is used for melting raw materials to glass. Melting tanks, whose principle was established more than a century ago, are mainly used for the manufacturing of glass for the mass production. Due to the long period of use, the optimization potential of these tanks has almost been exhausted. Energy savings are primarily achieved by increasing tonnages and thus reducing specific losses. To increase the efficiency of glass melting, the heat transfer to the raw material has to be improved. The approach of a novel entrained-flow reactor allows intensive contact with the furnace atmosphere and allows good heat transfer to the melting material. In this concept, the raw materials are fed directly into the flame and rapidly heated by convection and thermal radiation. In order to minimize bubble injection into the melt and thus refining effort, studies are carried out on the decomposition of carbonate raw materials. Due to the static mixers provided in the design, homogenization of the produced glass melt is ensured. Investigations of the flow conditions of the gas phase in the reactor result in the definition of a required grain size of the raw materials. Within the scope of this work, the requirements for the process, the raw materials and exhaust gas flow are defined in order to achieve significant energy savings with this melting unit compared to the melting tanks currently in use. However, further research work is still required for the technical realization of such an aggregate. The investigation of the decomposition of carbonate raw materials at high heating rates should be mentioned as an essential next step.