The distillation column is one of large energy consumable units in the cryogenic air separation process and the accurate energy analysis of this unit is necessary for choice of energy saving process. In this work, the energy method was adopted for energy analysis of a cryogenic nitrogen distillation column. In order to designing the energy saving distillation column, the exergy distribution of feed air, exergy efficiency and exergy loss for process condition was investigated and the optimal process condition to minimize the exergy loss was found. The result from this work can be used as a guideline for the choice of the process design conditions and efficiency improvement of cryogenic distillation column.