The University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment’s NorthStar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise, along with the Environmental Defense Fund, have released a new report titled, Supply Chain Energy Efficiency: Engaging Small & Medium Entities in Global Production Systems (PDF). Based on a two-day workshop tapping the brains of 31 representatives of energy service energy service companies, financers, retailers, nongovernmental organizations, government and academia from around the world, the report provides an intriguing look into thinking about industrial energy efficiency within the system of a supply chain, and highlights opportunities for corresponding cost-, reputation- and energy-saving improvements.

The report highlights four recommendations that came out of the two-day workshop spanning many of the actors involved in the supply chain of a saved kilowatt hour. The four recommendations are:

1. Engage leading companies to identify high-quality suppliers for pilot supply chain energy efficiency improvements.
2. Create one or more sector-based collaborations for improving supply chain energy efficiency by assembling groups of peer manufacturers within a supply chain and using benchmarking, process capability analysis and best practice sharing to identify and improve energy efficiency and industry competitiveness.
3. Increase transparency and standardization of energy use, audits and supply chain information.
4. Create finance and credit risk approaches and models for portfolio-level energy efficiency and energy management projects.

Read more about these recommendations and the full report here (PDF), and be sure to also check out EDF’s blog post about the report.