This guide will encourage more investors to enter constructive conversations with companies around energy-related issues
Our analysis covered 70 companies, including many well known and leading businesses, across six sectors: airlines, automobiles, chemicals, construction materials, paper and steel
Energy productivity is a material issue for companies and investors
With many industrial companies spending a huge part of their operating expenditure on energy (>15%), improving energy productivity has the potential to greatly improve a business' value as an investment
Significantly, improving energy productivity can effectively contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change risk
The value of your investment may be unrealised or eroded if energy productivity is not optimised
Over 70% of companies analysed may have significant room for improvement around energy use
Even in homogenous sectors, leaders are achieving energy productivity levels 2 to 5 times higher than poorer performers
Improving energy efficiency performance can deliver significant profit increases
This guide reveals a third of companies analysed could increase profits by over 5% per year if they matched the performance of leaders in their sector
Discounting capital costs from savings in energy costs could lead to 2-10% growth in annual profits for each year of implementation
Much of the energy savings achieved by leaders came through energy efficiency opportunities such as equipment upgrades, heat recovery, leak or waste reductions, and optimisation of controls
Much improvement is needed on data availability and data quality
Assessing energy productivity currently presents a challenge for investors (and an unrealised opportunity for portfolio companies) as data was uncertain in 19% of companies analysed
Furthermore, of 181 companies that reported in the six sectors, 73 had incomplete or insufficient data for benchmarking
