One of the most overlooked tools for combating climate change is energy efficiency.
While it does not grab the headlines, every incremental effort to reduce energy consumption is vital if the world is to hit the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 C.
The potential of energy efficiency measures to reduce emissions is unavoidable.
A report last month on recent progress in rolling out energy-saving measures, published by the International Energy Agency, is damning. It found that global improvements have not exceeded what is needed to get the world on track to reach net zero emissions by the year 2050. Since 2015, the rate of improvements has been sliding, falling to its slowest in a decade in 2020.
Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, said there was no plausible way to net zero emissions without using our energy resources much more efficiently.
The slow pace of investment has left facilitators exasperated with the lack of opportunities to reduce their carbon footprint, from electrical and capital goods companies to software providers and investment funds.
Jonathan Parr, a fund manager at Triple Point Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Company, says government incentives initially made renewable power projects attractive, but they have been winding down because they invest in projects such as recovering waste heat from industrial sites and retrofitting insulation or heat pumps in homes.
He says that the very low-hanging fruit has disappeared. The balance has shifted a bit. He says that decarbonisation carries a stigma that it is more expensive than other polluting alternatives. Frustration has been compounded by the fact that power bills have gone up due to soaring gas prices.
Katie McGinty, the vice-president and chief sustainability and external relations officer at Johnson Controls, compares the missed opportunity in energy efficiency to $20 bills littered the sidewalk and nobody picking them up, and the US federal government not taking the same lead on building standards as it does for appliances or cars.
Olivier Blum, chief strategy and sustainability officer at Schneider Electric, says that the corporate world is slow to start, but he noticed signs of change around 2018 as the ambitions of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 seeped through to boardrooms in the form of net zero commitments, which are now being converted into action.
He says we see it coming. It comes from investors and boards. Parr says that it is not just the pledges from private companies that are now driving the momentum behind energy efficiency projects. He notes that housing associations and local authorities have been given clear instructions that they must decarbonise their housing stock.
Executives at groups that are involved in energy efficiency are becoming more bullish that investment will flood into the sector.
The gear shift has been driven by a triple annual investment in the sector by 2030 to hit net zero targets, and companies need to demonstrate their progress, according to the executives.
McGinty explains that buildings represent 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and there is no decarbonising the planet without decarbonising buildings. The pantheon of tools has been brought together with solar, wind and electric vehicles to bring energy efficiency to the pantheon of tools. After the initial impact of the Covid pandemic, a rebound in manufacturing output has contributed to a rally in the shares prices of efficiency-enabling companies.
The price of Schneider Electric and Johnson Controls has doubled over the past two years, and hit record highs last week. Britain s Spirax Sarco Engineering, which makes steam management systems - an industrial staple that accounts for a ninth of US energy use, has also enjoyed a share price boost, according to the country's Department of Energy.
Scott Cagehin, an analyst at Investec, says investors are now on the hunt for less obvious industrial winners from the drive towards energy efficiency.
Schneider, Vestas and Spirax have run their course in terms of being ESG friendly, he says. Who will we look at, who has not yet been acknowledged for that? He advises: You have to sift through those putting ESG environmental, social and governance criteria in their pack just to improve their credentials and then look at who is winning business and growing revenues because customers want to buy their products to improve their own sustainability. As many industrial companies try to jump on the energy efficiency bandwagon, Blum of Schneider Electric warns of a moment of reckoning.
He says that many companies have seen a re-rating because of sustainability, but there will be a re-rating of people who have talked about it and those who deliver it.