EP100 FAQs

EP100 is a corporate commitment platform through which companies pledge to improve their energy productivity by deploying energy efficient technologies and practices. By joining EP100 through one of its three pathways, companies commit to reducing their energy consumption in relation to their economic output, ensuring that they are maximizing their economic and financial gain from the energy that they use.

Energy productivity is a measure of the economic benefit received from each unit of energy consumed. It is calculated by dividing total economic output (e.g., products, revenue, GDP) by the amount of energy consumed (e.g., kWh of electricity, Btu, GJ). While many countries use energy productivity as a national-level framework for assessing how effectively they use energy to run their economies, companies use this metric to track the relationship between their profitability and energy use.

Energy productivity is a function not only of efficient technologies but also of efficient operational practices and employee behavior. Increasing energy productivity is the equivalent of reducing energy intensity (the inverse of energy productivity); the energy productivity metric, however, is particularly powerful since it correlates positively with greater savings and financial stability so that companies can directly relate energy savings to higher profitability.

In contrast, energy efficiency is measured at the level of a physical product, piece of equipment, energy system, or industrial process. Energy efficiency is calculated as energy output (i.e., service provided) divided by energy input (i.e., the energy or power consumed to provide that service).

Energy productivity is the unsung hero of sustainability practices. There are many reasons why it makes sense for companies to join EP100, including:

• Improving energy productivity helps companies’ bottom line:  They save energy and money without sacrificing output. Increasing energy productivity enables companies to decouple their output from their energy use – allowing them to do more with less energy.
• Improved energy productivity also offers numerous other benefits, including reductions in material use, waste and emissions; increased competitiveness; improvements to industrial working processes and worker productivity; and improved working conditions for employees.
• Companies that join EP100 provide global leadership in mitigating climate change. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that improvements in energy efficiency can deliver over 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to meet global climate goals, and private sector efforts are critical for meeting these targets. EP100 companies not only reduce their own carbon footprints but also provide inspiration and peer support to other companies to take action to improve global energy productivity.
• By joining EP100, companies can strengthen their communication of the business case for improving energy productivity to key stakeholders, including other companies, policymakers and investors. The Climate Group communications team leads high-profile global media campaigns showcasing why the world’s most influential businesses have committed to improving energy productivity and how they’re achieving it. Through this campaign, companies committing to EP100 have opportunities for positive press coverage on a global basis.
• Members benefit from global peer-to-peer engagement and networking opportunities through webinars and events where best practices and lessons learned are shared.
• Some companies have even shared that the annual reporting exercise can be a welcome reminder of the impact of energy efficiency and the importance of prioritizing energy productivity goals.

The EP100 platform offers three pathways for membership, which reflect the diverse strategies through which companies can improve energy productivity. The three commitment pathways are:

• Doubling Energy Productivity: A company commits to doubling its energy productivity globally within 25 years, with a baseline year of 2005 at the earliest. The company chooses a relevant energy productivity metric to track and report.
• Implementing an Energy Management System (EnMS): A company commits to implementing an energy management system in each of its facilities within 10 years and commits to an energy productivity target. An energy management system provides a structure for both tracking energy performance and accountability for improving it.
• Net Zero Carbon Buildings (NZCB): A company commits to owning, occupying and developing buildings that operate at net zero carbon emissions by 2030. This commitment is led by the World Green Building Council.

Companies need only commit to one of these pathways and are welcome to join more than one pathway. 

Please contact us for further information about all three pathways. 

Fantastic! For more information and to join the campaign please contact us. 

If you have any questions, we are always happy to help. Please get in touch. 

Yes. Please get in touch, we are also happy to share resources to help you demonstrate the value of EP100 to your company. We also have a number of resources in our publications page you may find useful. The EP100 team is also available to discuss the campaign directly with your company’s decisionmakers.

Yes. EP100 allows members to choose their own baseline year as far back as 2005 to recognize action already underway. During the annual reporting period, members provide annual energy consumption data for the baseline year and onward.  Third party verification is not required.

If your company’s ambition goes beyond doubling its energy productivity – great! You may want to consider the Implementing an Energy Management System pathway, as this allows companies to set their own energy productivity target.

An EnMS must either be certified to a recognized standard (i.e., ISO 50001) or be compliant with the following principles of an energy management standard:

• Top-level management support for a well-defined, company-wide energy-management policy;
• Energy objectives and targets that support the energy policy;
• An empowered energy management team implementing the energy policy;
• Processes that measure and evaluate progress toward energy-saving targets; and
• A continuous, year-over-year improvement process (Plan-Do-Check-Act).

A net zero carbon building is a building that is highly energy efficient and fully powered from on-site and/or off-site renewable energy sources. You can find more detailed information on the World Green Building Council website.

No. EP100, RE100, and EV100 are independent (but complementary) programs. We do, however, encourage companies to consider joining all three initiatives as the combination affords the greatest opportunity for companies to take the least-cost decarbonization pathway and optimize their energy use.

• Through the “Doubling Energy Productivity” or the “Implementing Energy Management Systems” pathways? No. Although renewable energy consumption reduces a company’s overall fossil-fuel-based primary energy consumption, EP100 is a demand-side energy productivity commitment. As a result, EP100 does not focus on what kind of energy a company uses, but rather how they use it. Energy efficient technologies and practices are the driver toward achieving EP100 goals. We recommend the Net Zero Carbon Buildings pathway and/or the parallel renewable energy campaign, RE100, to companies considering making significant investments in renewable energy.
• Through the “Net Zero Carbon Buildings” pathway? Yes, for part of the commitment. In addition to committing to energy efficiency, this pathway requires a commitment to renewable energy to achieve net zero carbon buildings. In this pathway, source energy calculations are necessary for determining the level of renewable energy used in a company’s net zero carbon buildings. (If you choose this pathway, then we recommend that you also consider joining the renewable energy campaign, RE100, to demonstrate your significant investment in renewable energy.)

You can find a list of companies committed to EP100 on our members page.

The table below provides examples of metrics that our members use. Please note this is not an exhaustive list and companies can tailor a metric to best suit their needs. You can find the full list of metrics chosen by members in the 2020 EP100 Progress & Insight Report.

The economic output metric is intentionally flexible. Members have found several ways to account for economic output that describe something more than or different from a single product. For instance, members can consider using revenue, retail floor space (e.g., for clothing stores), number of rooms booked (e.g., for hotels), square footage of projects completed (e.g., for architectural firms), or number of calls answered (e.g., for an IT help desk provider) to use as their economic output metric. Please contact us if you are experiencing any difficulty in choosing an economic output metric.

Members can select their chosen reporting boundary. The reporting boundary designates the scope of information that your company includes when you complete the reporting form. For instance, your company might prefer to report data only for activities that are under your company's financial control. Definitions for each reporting boundary are included here based on The Carbon Report definitions:

Equity share: Under the equity share approach, a company accounts for GHG emissions from operations according to its share of equity in the operation. The equity share reflects economic interest, which is the extent of rights a company has to the risks and rewards flowing from an operation. Typically, the share of economic risks and rewards in an operation is aligned with the company’s percentage ownership of that operation, and equity share will normally be the same as the ownership percentage.

Financial Control: The company has financial control over the operation if the former can direct the financial and operating policies of the latter with a view to gaining economic benefits from its activities.

Operational Control: A company has operational control over an operation if it or one of its subsidiaries has the full authority to introduce and implement its operating policies at the operation.

The Climate Group assumes that a member’s reported data are inclusive of all their operations and facilities within their chosen reporting boundary. If that is not the case, members must inform us and tell us why any exclusions were made.

Yes, energy consumption for owned and leased vehicles should be included.

Yes, and these assets should be included.

No, the EP100 campaign only requires members to make commitments for their Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Although you are not required to include scope 3 emissions in your EP100 commitment, members are encouraged to include them where possible.

When acquiring new facilities (or new companies), the boundary for reporting would change and you would need to start reporting energy data for the newly acquired facilities. However, the baseline does not need to change. This means there would probably be a spike in energy consumption during the acquisition year, but this increase would likely be offset by increased economic output when calculating overall energy productivity.

We understand that a company’s energy productivity might fluctuate year-to-year due to many factors, including when undergoing expansion projects or experiencing economic downturns. Rather than focusing on the year-to-year energy productivity changes, the EP100 platform instead focuses on overall progress toward a company’s final target. The intent of the EP100 platform is to showcase concerted efforts and achievements toward improving energy productivity. We recognize that setbacks and challenges can happen (and often lead to lessons learned); the annual reporting form gives space to provide more information, if needed, to clarify any unexpected changes to energy productivity.

The information required for our annual reporting is both quantitative and qualitative (e.g., challenges and motivators to improving energy productivity). Most importantly, members must provide their annual data on economic output and energy consumption since their baseline year so we can track progress toward a member’s energy productivity target.

We send reporting forms to members in June and the forms are due in August. The data from these reports are compiled into a published EP100 report each November. Exact dates will fluctuate from year to year.

We offer a wide range of events and speaking opportunities for our members, most notably Climate Week NYC which is organized by The Climate Group. Each year, Climate Week NYC hosts more than 100 events, including EP100 networking and other energy efficiency-related events.

Other event opportunities for members include London Climate Action Week, Verge, COP, access to EP100 Webinars, roundtables, factory tours, members’ meetings, and peer-to-peer engagement events.

No, webinars and events are completely optional.

Yes there is a fee for membership to the EP100 initiative to help us run the campaign:

Double Energy Productivity: $6,000 per year

Implement an Energy Management System: $6,000

Net Zero Carbon Buildings commitment: $3,000

Admin fees sustain the everyday running of the initiatives and are the best way for our members to continue supporting the wider mission. They directly enable the longevity of our work as an NGO committed to accelerating climate action and ensure the campaign’s continued operation. 

EP100 admin fees are paid annually and payment takes place from April to April, but this is being updated. We reserve the right to review membership fees every Autumn based on inflation. We will let members know of any changes at least four months in advance. 

As part of the joining process, the EP100 team will send the prospective member a Membership Agreement to sign, as well as collect relevant details including billing information. Once complete, we will send the member’s first annual invoice directly to your delegated Finance contact. 

For more information, please visit our Membership page and read our FAQs.

 

CDP runs the global environmental disclosure system. Each year CDP supports thousands of companies, cities, states and regions to measure and manage their risks and opportunities on climate change, water security and deforestation. CDP does so at the request of their investors, purchasers and city stakeholders.

Although the EP100 reporting process involves several questions that align with CDP (as indicated in the reporting forms), EP100 is unique in its emphasis on economic output relative to energy consumption. Also, the EP100 reporting form does not request emissions data, whereas CDP collects emissions and other data on environmental impacts.

The SBT Initiative is a greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategy that helps companies understand their contribution to total global GHG emissions. In setting a science-based target, companies establish a goal to reduce their own GHG emissions proportional to their impact on the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.

EP100 is a separate corporate commitment platform through which companies commit to improving their energy productivity. By improving energy productivity, corporations enhance their resilience and boost competitiveness, all while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, creating jobs, and improving energy security. Companies can use EP100 as a tool to take their first steps towards reducing energy waste and achieving their SBT.

Please see our interview with Landsec which includes a discussion on their perspective of the benefits of their membership in both the EP100 and SBT initiatives.

Please contact us to discuss ways that your company can be more involved in the EP100 initiative.  

Yes, you can sign up here. 

EP100 members are encouraged to participate in the Cooling Challenge, whereby they identify ways to operate their cooling systems as efficiently as possible to optimize the contribution of efficient, clean cooling in meeting their energy productivity goals. A company’s investments in energy-efficient cooling can generate financial savings that boost its bottom line and improve its competitiveness. And with electricity demand from air conditioning alone set to more than triple by 2050, companies can play a leading role in mitigating climate impacts by investing in energy-efficient cooling.

You may be interested in downloading our Cooling Checklist which was developed in partnership with the Alliance to Save Energy. Companies can use this free tool to identify energy efficient measures, ranging from no/low-cost maintenance and adjustments (e.g., to controls and setpoints) to investment-grade retrofits (e.g., for chilled water systems, temperature controls, or refrigerant replacements). 

Climate Group leads EP100. We work in partnership with World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) on the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment.

The We Mean Business coalition is catalysing business action and driving policy ambition to accelerate the zero carbon transition.  For more information please see their website. EP100 is part of the We Mean Business Coalition, in addition to the EV100 and RE100 campaigns, the Science Based Targets initiative, below50, other corporate campaigns.