The volume in the RSE Colloquia series entitled “Industry: Less Energy Consumption More Competitiveness? Pathways to Global Efficiency” illustrates a representative “coring” of about 1,300 efficiency projects carried out over 10 years in 1,514 factories belonging to 7 energy-intensive sectors.

The analysis is aimed at verifying whether the consumption reduction actions undertaken by industrial companies go hand in hand with the competitiveness goals pursued by the companies themselves.

Indeed, the goals underlying economy decarbonization require commitments and appropriate measures to reduce energy consumption, while opting for a sustainable approach and assuming that such commitments are made without depressing the country’s development, but possibly making it grow.

The judgment is no foregone conclusion: hence the twofold added value of the work presented in the volume.

On the one hand, in the spirit of the RSE Colloquia series, this is a co-authored contribution involving entities that have collaborated with RSE, such as the Italian Association of Energy Economists (AIEE), the I-Com think tank and Politecnico di Milano. The resulting picture thus represents authoritative views, experiences, knowledge and diverse sensibilities.

Another qualifying aspect is concreteness, as the study favors an “empirical approach” – that is, it seeks to provide evidence of the relationship between energy efficiency and the performance of the companies themselves by observing real cases. The 1,300 projects cited provide a representative and statistically significant set of energy and economic data. The results were the subject of an internal comparison involving various industry stakeholders who “recounted” the concrete experiences they faced.

What is the relationship linking efficiency and competitiveness? While pointing to some trend lines, the study’s conclusions deserve careful comparative examination to identify key success factors. Today we can rely on one further tool to make ever better use of energy efficiency, the indispensable lever of sustainable development.