How do companies manage energy? A systematic literature review on energy cost accounting, energy efficiency, and energy management

Abstract

It is imperative to recognize the indispensable role energy plays in sustaining business operations. Nevertheless, energy and topics associated with energy are often neglected, despite the crucial nature of information on energy consumption for the needs of managers in decision-making and the act of managing a company. As energy and its application are interdisciplinary topics, information is scattered throughout the literature. Consequently, the absence of a comprehensive study systematically collecting, describing and analyzing the current state of knowledge is striking. To address this deficiency, this systematic literature review synthesizes information from 39 papers published in 19 journals. The extracted contents of the papers were categorized, summarized, and analyzed according to their contribution toward first and second stage allocation of energy costs, energy measurement, energy efficiency, energy strategy, and energy-related investment decisions. The results of the study indicate a significant research gap in empirical investigations. The interdisciplinarity of the investigated topics leads to scattered information and frameworks for a structured analysis of corporate energy cost practices are lacking. To address this gap, this paper develops a framework for the collection of information on corporate energy practices based on the findings. This article puts forth the proposition that empirical investigations of corporate energy practices warrant scholarly attention. Such empirical studies need to find out what practice is doing, as the depth of the current state of literature is inadequate.