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While pursuing energy management, firms simultaneously strive to boost sales as a path towards economic performance. Also, the literature suggests that family firms exhibit greater environmental commitment than their non-family counterparts. To examine these contentions, this review espouses contingency theory to interrogate the correlations of (1) energy consumption targets, (2) energy efficiency enhancing measures, (3) energy consumption monitoring and (4) the domestic sales performance of small family firms in Turkey's food sector.

Data were sourced from the World Bank Enterprise Survey. A sample of 137 family firms in food production, processing and retail was analysed using non-linear structural equation modelling. Path coefficients were determined to estimate the extent to which energy management practices predict domestic sales.

The path analysis revealed that although energy consumption targets do not directly increase sales performance, they stimulate firms' energy efficiency enhancement measures and energy consumption monitoring to produce this effect by 21%.

The contingency lens espoused leaves room to capture further antecedents in small family food firms' technical, managerial, ownership, operational and architectural configuration that may also interact with or predict the propensity for energy management.

For practitioners, the inherent findings demonstrate that there are firm-specific material benefits arising from adopting energy management practices. And, although small firms such as family food businesses may have low energy intensities, they can improve their sales performance by setting energy targets, installing energy efficiency enhancing measures and embarking on energy consumption monitoring.

Public stakeholders in Turkey such as the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, the General Directorate of Energy Affairs and affiliate institutions can reflect on these findings to develop a coherent national energy management policy for small firms. Such initiatives are especially relevant to Turkey and its ambitions to join the EU which requires member states to set up a national energy efficiency action plan.

This inquiry is one of the first to examine energy management in the food sector at the family firm level through the contingency lens. Theoretically, the results draw attention and shed new light on disparate energy management practices and their discrete yet substantial contribution to sales performance.

On the basis of corporate wholesale and hypermarket stores, this study aims to investigate the relationship between energy consumption, physical building characteristics and operational sales performance and the impact of energy management on the corporate environmental performance.

A very unique dataset of METRO GROUP over 19 European countries is analyzed in a sophisticated econometric approach for the timeframe from January 2011 until December 2014. Multiple regression models are applied for the panel, to explain the electricity consumption of the corporate assets on a monthly basis and the total energy consumption on an annual basis. Using Generalized Additive Models, to model nonlinear covariate effects, the authors decompose the response variables into the implicit contribution of building characteristics, operational sales performance and energy management attributes, under control of the outdoor weather conditions and spatial–temporal effects.

METRO GROUP’s wholesale and hypermarket stores prove significant reductions in electricity and total energy consumption over the analyzed timeframe. Due to the implemented energy consumption and carbon emission reduction targets, the influence of the energy management measures, such as the identification of stores associated with the lowest energy performance, was found to contribute toward a more efficient corporate environmental performance.

In the context of corporate responsibility/sustainability of wholesale, hypermarket and retail corporations, the energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions from corporates’ real estate assets is of emerging interest. Besides the insights about the energy efficiency of corporate real estate assets, the role of the energy management, contributing to a more efficient corporate environmental performance, is not yet investigated for a large European wholesale and hypermarket portfolio.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of countries has some of the highest electricity consumptions and carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the world. This poses a direct challenge to the GCC government’s ability to meet their CO₂ reduction targets. In this review paper the current household electricity consumption situation in the GCC is reviewed.

Three scenarios for reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions are proposed and evaluated using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) as well as the political, economic, social, technical, legal and environmental (PESTLE) frameworks.

The first scenario found that using solar Photovoltaic (PV) or hybrid solar PV and wind system to power household lighting could save significant amounts of energy, based on lighting making up between 8% to 30% of electricity consumption in GCC households. The second scenario considers replacement of conventional appliances with energy-efficient ones that use around 20% less energy. The third scenario looks at influencing consumer behavior towards sustainable energy consumption.

Pilot trials of these scenarios are recommended for a number of households. Then the results and feedback could be used to launch the schemes GCC-wide.

The proposed scenarios are designed to encourage responsible electricity consumption and production within households (SDG12).

All three proposals are found viable for policymakers to implement. However, to ensure successful implementation GCC Governments are recommended to review all the opportunities and challenges associated with these schemes as laid out in this paper.

Economic growth of China in the past decades has caused rapid increase in energy consumption and environmental deterioration. Therefore, it is critical to make an environmental evaluation and to help decision makers to know each province’s distance to the optimal target and improve environmental performance.

In such background, the authors use a within-group common benchmarking model with data envelopment analysis for China’s environmental evaluation and target setting in this paper. This model considers a common treatment of decision-making units within groups but allows for the different circumstances across groups and gives a common reference set for benchmarking.

The results show that there are regional difference in economic development and environmental protection. The coastal area has the best average environmental efficiency, then followed by inland area and the lowest level is the western area. The target results show that in four inputs, namely, population, capital, energy consumption and water consumption, the water consumption is the significant variable which should be decreased largely. All provinces have room to improve their economic level under the condition of a better environment.

In this research, the authors consider the similarity in geography and economy for Chinese provinces and divide 30 provinces into eight economic zones; thus, provinces in the same zone are evaluated with the same weight. Environmental performance and efficiency for each province can be obtained. Efficient targets for those inefficient provinces are provided as a possible improvement direction as well.

China is by far the world’s largest energy consumer and importer. Reasonably forecasting the trend of China’s total energy consumption (CTEC) is of great significance. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new-structure grey system model (NSGM (1, 1)) to forecast CTEC.

Two matrices for computing the parameters of NSGM (1, 1) were defined and the specific calculation formula was derived. Since the NSGM (1, 1) model increases the number of its background values, which improves the smoothness effect of the background value and weakens the effects of extreme values in the raw sequence on the model’s performance; hence it has better simulation and prediction performances than traditional grey models. Finally, NSGM (1, 1) was used to forecast China’s total energy consumption during 2016-2025. The forecast showed CTEC will grow rapidly in the next ten years.

Therefore, in order to meet the target of keeping CTEC under control at 4.8 billion tons of standard coal in 2020, Chinese government needs to take necessary measures such as transforming the economic development pattern and enhancing the energy utilization efficiency.

A new-structure grey forecasting model, NSGM (1, 1), is proposed in this paper, which improves the smoothness and weakens the effects of extreme values and has a better structure and performance than those of other grey models. The authors successfully employ the new model to simulate and forecast CTEC. The research findings could aid Chinese government in formulating energy policies and help energy exporters make rational energy yield plans.

Despite the success in achieving the objectives for the use of renewable energy sources, the EU’s competitiveness is not at the desired level. In particular, the largest decreases in fossil-type energy intensity were observed in last 13 members of EU, namely, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The purpose of this paper is to trace how these countries protect the competitiveness of their dirty (energy-intensive) industries.

The study employs revealed comparative advantage (RCA) indices to measure the comparative advantage (CA) of EU-13 in dirty industries for the period 1995-2014 and assesses these indices in the framework of EU’s climate policy.

Some policies which make industries to adapt EU’s 20-20-20 targets are forcing industries. In order to compete, these industries are leaving Europe and looking elsewhere. In this study the authors found that, particularly chemicals and non-metallic mineral manufactures resulted in a weakening of their CA over the years in some of these members. Similarly it is found that the RCA indices of iron and steel and non-ferrous metals are decreasing.

The study addresses the EU-13’s position in terms of their competitiveness and find the connection with the EU’s climate policy through their RCAs of dirty industries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how changes toward sustainable consumption of electric energy [1] are learned in the workplace, the paper uses a practice-based approach to organizational learning. This paper focuses on the workplace as a rich environment where social learning is not limited to individuals but is also rooted in the community of practitioners at an organizational level.

This paper used participative action research through interviews, two focus groups and observations. Departing from the interventions, this paper identified the elements of the practice of energy consumption. This paper further altered elements to intentionally promote the reconfiguration of such practice toward sustainable patterns among the working group.

The results show that the goal of promoting sustainability through changes in the individual and collective actions and understandings may be achieved through sharing knowledge and keeping knowledge alive within the practices of a community; embedding knowledge in material practices and innovating as an ongoing process. During the research, this paper observed that employees became more aware of sustainable consumption and such self-consciousness prompted behavioral changes in the workplace. Likewise, the new material arrangements adopted in the work environment nudged sustainable energy consumption, which required lower levels of awareness.

This paper contributes to sustainability studies by providing more information on how the learning of sustainable energy consumption happens in the level of social practices. It also contributes to workplace studies by showing that changes in materials, meanings and competences interwove with new dynamics to reshape the practice, foreshadowing more lasting changes toward sustainability.

This article aims to optimise energy use and consumption by integrating Lean Six Sigma methodology with the ISO 50001 energy management system standard in an Irish dairy plant operation.

This work utilised Lean Six Sigma methodology to identify methods to measure and optimise energy consumption. The authors use a single descriptive case study in an Irish dairy as the methodology to explain how DMAIC was applied to reduce energy consumption.

The replacement of heavy oil with liquid natural gas in combination with the new design of steam boilers led to a CO₂ footprint reduction of almost 50%.

A further longitudinal study would be useful to measure and monitor the energy management system progress and carry out more case studies on LSS integration with energy management systems across the dairy industry.

The novelty of this study is the application of LSS in the dairy sector as an enabler of a greater energy-efficient facility, as well as the testing of the DMAIC approach to meet a key objective for ISO 50001 accreditation.

In many countries, innovation in building design for improving energy performance, reducing CO2 emissions and minimizing life cycle cost has received much attention for sustainable development. This paper investigates the importance of optimization tools for enhancing the design performance in the early stages of Vietnam's cooling-dominated buildings in hot and humid climates using an integrated building design approach.

The methodology of this study exploits the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) optimization algorithm coupled with building simulation to research a trade-off between the optimization of investment cost and energy consumption. Our approach focuses on the whole optimization problem of thermal envelope, glazing and energy systems from preliminary design phases. The methodology is then tested for a case study of a non-residential building located in Hanoi.

The results show a considerable improvement in design performance by our method compared to current building design. The optimal solutions present the trade-off between energy consumption and capital cost in the form of a Pareto front. This helps architects, engineers and investors make important decisions in the early design stages with a large view of impacts of all factors on energy performance and cost.

This is one of the original research to study integrated building design applying the simulation-based genetic optimization algorithm for cooling-dominated buildings in Vietnam. The case study in this article is for a non-residential building in the north of Vietnam but the methodology can also be applied to residential buildings and other regions.

Energy usage of households accounts for a significant portion of total energy consumption and carbon emissions. Scottish homes today are highly energy consumers emitting on average 3 tonnes of CO₂ per house annually and the amount exceeds the UK average of 2.75 tonnes of CO₂. Moreover, 26% of the households are actually facing fuel poverty and it is therefore a critical task to efficiently manage and minimise energy trends in housing in order to meet carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission reduction and energy consumption cut targets such as 80% overall cuts in carbon emissions by 2080 for the UK, compared with 1990 levels. The study has been undertaken within the Zero Energy Mass Custom Homes (ZEMCH) research network's demonstration projects e.g. ‘ZEMCH 109’. The existing post-council end-terraced house was intended to be extended in South Ayrshire, Scotland in 2012. As part of the project, the Building Environments Analysis Unit (BEAU) research centre has conducted a post occupancy monitoring of the energy and indoor environmental conditions e.g. indoor air temperature, relative humidity and CO₂ levels in the Scottish affordable home which will also continue even after the construction of the newly built extension and the refurbishment of the existing home. It is therefore important for the successful demonstration of the ZEMCH 109 project and for the purpose of this study that a detailed monitoring and a post occupancy evaluation (POE) of the exiting NRGStyle home are performed sufficiently in order to investigate the relationship between energy consumption and the indoor environmental conditions and cross-checked with the accepted standards.