Philip Dickemann

2022

When deciding on energy-related investments, concrete capital budgeting tools are necessary, and a good database is essential. Yet, how much has already been discussed about this topic, what conclusions has the literature already come to and how much potential is there in this area? This literature review based on papers published in research journals gives insights into the usage of energy-related investment criteria when it comes to decide to rather conduct an investment or not in industrial companies. This study focuses on two issues. On the one hand, it is intended to clarify what energy-related investments are generally, from the company’s energy policy to the collection of relevant data. On the other hand, we look at the most important decision-making criteria for companies and how these differ when considering large, medium-sized or small companies in relation to the number of employees or taking into account the classification into energy-intensive and non-energy-intensive production. This study encompasses papers from 28 academic journals on topics such as energy, accounting, engineering and business. The most important concern of this research was the comparison of papers regarding the use of energy-related investment criteria. However, it was hard to find papers focusing on capital budgeting tools for energy-related investments in the literature. Very few studies address the definition of energy investments or examine the entire decision-making process around energy efficiency investments in a company. The impression was that there is still a massive need of research for energy management in the industrial sector.