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Who Invests in Energy Efficiency and Why?
By Steven Nadel, Executive Director
This blog post is the second in a three-post series on understanding and increasing investments by businesses and individuals in energy efficiency. In the first post, we discussed current energy efficiency investments in the United States, which we estimate total about $60-115 billion per year. This number includes investments driven by policy, private market investments, and a mix of the two. In this post, we explore who invests in energy efficiency and why, focusing on mainstream businesses and consumers. The third and final post will build on the first two and discuss approaches that could increase efficiency investments in the future.
Who Invests in Energy Efficiency?
Recent research reveals notable differences in the businesses and individuals investing in energy efficiency. For example, an analysis of EIA’s Manufacturer Energy Consumption Survey (MECS) shows that larger firms have substantially higher adoption rates of energy management activities than smaller firms. (EIA will release this data in the next few months.)
Likewise, the Shelton Group found greater engagement in sustainability and conservation in certain business segments than others, illustrated in the figure below:
Percent of respondents indicating sustainability/conservation was important or very important when asked “How important would you say sustainability and/or conservation is to your company or organization as operating, capital improvement, construction and purchasing/supply chain decisions are made?” Source: Shelton Group’s 2016 B2B Pulse survey…
To continue reading the blog post, visit: http://aceee.org/blog/2017/07/who-invests-energy-efficiency-and-why