Upcoming energy efficiency research from Pew will provide corporate benchmarks
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is preparing a report on corporate energy efficiency, to be released in March 2010. Turns out Toyota is the big sponsor of this project, putting up a $1.4 million grant over three years.
The data was SUPPOSED to be based on feedback from 95 companies, but only 48 businesses that were contacted deigned to respond. Makes me wonder if the ones that DIDN'T respond had something to hide or simply couldn't get their act together with the data.
Nevertheless, the one who DID respond are BIG companies, ranging in size from $8 billion to $99 billion in annual revenue.
The Pew researchers have published an abstract with some of the findings. First off, here are the three top reasons these companies are interested in energy efficiency:
- Reducing carbon footprint
- Responding to rising energy prices
- Demonstrating commitment to corporate social responsibility
One especially positive finding: 87 percent of these companies have built energy management into the compensation reviews for facilities or plant managers. In other words, you don't get your bonus if you don't worry about it.
Here are some other things to note:
- Almost all of the respondents (98 percent) believe that there will be legislation mandating greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the United States; slightly more than half (57 percent) think this will happen within two years, while the rest think it will take four years.
- Of the companies that provided quantitative data, the mean energy savings target (between the years of 2003 and 2013) was 20 percent.
- Approximately 81 percent of the responding companies had modified their products or services in some way to account for evolving energy efficiency expectations.
Other topics explored in the research include supply chain initiatives, levels of executive sponsorship, the financial implications and return on investment from energy efficiency, and the main challenges to corporate policies and best practices.
To download some key data points in an executive summary, visit this link.
If you want to peruse the results visually, here's a link to a presentation based on the same data.
And, of course, the complete report and analysis will be coming out early in 2010.