Everyone agrees that energy efficiency makes sense. It cuts emissions, lowers energy bills, strengthens competitiveness, eases pressure on electricity grids and improves energy security. Yet implementation continues to lag behind ambition.
So how to we bridge this gap? At the IEA:s Global Conference on Energy Efficiency in Montreal, We Don’t Have Time invited a group of experts to find the answers.
Mike Umiker, Energy Efficiency Movement Association; Cecilia Garpe, AFRY; Mario Giordiano, Signify; Jo Vanhoren, Alfa Laval; and program host Nick Nuttall.
The International Energy Agency's (IEA's) 11th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency was held at the Palais des congrès de Montreal in Montreal, Canada, on June 29–30, 2026. Co-hosted by the IEA and the Government of Canada, it gathered over 600 ministers, CEOs, and global experts from 60 countries to discuss energy security, affordability, and the clean energy transition.
"Energy efficiency is the fastest, lowest-hanging fruit to drive competitiveness, energy resilience, but also to enable the electrification," said Mike Umiker, Executive Director of the Energy Efficiency Movement when joining We Don’t Have Time’s broadcast at the conference. "The challenge is really making it tangible and visible." The numbers underline the paradox. According to the Energy Efficiency Movement's latest report, 98 percent of companies are already investing – or planning to invest – in energy efficiency. Yet 43 percent still identify cost as the biggest obstacle.
"The ambition is there," Umiker said. "But we have an implementation gap."
That gap, the panel argued, is rarely about technology. More often, it comes down to knowing where to begin.
"I think one thing is actually how to do it," said Cecilia Garpe, Head of Commercial Excellence at AFRY, a leading company within engineering, design and advisory services "They might have an ambition, but it's hard to know exactly how to do it."
She explained that successful projects emerge when energy efficiency aligns with a company's broader business priorities. One example is Microsoft's new data centre outside Helsinki, where waste heat is recovered and fed into Fortum's district heating network.
"As you know, a lot of data centers are popping up, and one of the most important things for them is to really be the first ones in place, to be fast. In this case, Microsoft also wanted to be green, which was to our advantage. But the other thing was that the energy producer Fortum was there, and that there was a district heating network in place. This made it possible to be fast in putting the data center up, and also to use the waste heat in the district heating system. The stars aligned here," Garpe said. "Their business drivers and energy efficiency came together."
Jo Vanhoren, President of Alfa Laval's Business Unit Welded & Circular Technologies, has spent decades helping industries recover wasted energy. From his perspective, companies that embrace efficiency are rewarded immediately.
"When you get it right, you can make enormous savings on your bottom line," he said. "Annually we supply more than 50 gigawatts additional heat recovery in the market."
The biggest obstacle, he argued, is often that companies simply do not know where their energy is going.
"It's not always people are aware where to find the energy savings," Vanhoren said. "Once you have understood what drives your energy bill, you have also a way to improve it."
That growing ability to measure energy use in real time is changing the conversation. Digitalisation, sensors and AI are making invisible losses visible, allowing companies to optimise entire systems rather than individual pieces of equipment.
For Mario Giordano, Global Head of Public & Government Affairs at Signify, world leader in lighting for professionals, consumers and IoT, the benefits extend far beyond lower electricity bills. Better lighting, he argued, is a perfect example of how energy efficiency improves everyday life.
"In road and street lighting, you might reduce the frequency of accidents. You can increase the safety, perceived and real safety on the streets," he said.
The same principle applies across society.
"Everywhere we have seen the energy efficiency and lighting has been properly designed, we have seen an increase of the productivity and increase of the quality of the activity done in that environment."
The discussion also explored one of the biggest barriers to implementation: financing. Even projects with attractive payback periods often struggle to secure upfront investment.
One increasingly promising solution is Energy Efficiency as a Service, where specialised providers finance, install and operate efficiency upgrades while customers pay from the resulting savings.
"It allows companies not to make the upfront capex, which often is the bottleneck." Vanhoren explained. "It makes the business case a no-brainer."
The concept is still developing, Garpe noted, but momentum is building.
"I think it is a win-win if you do it right," she said. "But I think there needs to be a lot of trust here as well."
Giordano pointed to another advantage. Service-based business models do not only reduce financial risk; they also support circularity by allowing equipment to be upgraded, maintained and eventually reused rather than discarded.
For Mike Umiker, however, financing is only part of the picture. Data alone will not transform the energy system.
"It doesn't help if you just collect," he said. "You have to act on the data."
He also argued that companies need to move beyond isolated upgrades and think at the system level.
"We really need a system-level approach," Umiker said. "These hybrid models will help hopefully to really get easier access and obviously scale energy efficiency implementation."
As the discussion turned to the proposed global target of achieving 35 percent electrification by 2035, the panel was united. Electrification and energy efficiency are not competing priorities. They depend on each other.
"We really need to save all the energy which we can before we electrify," Vanhoren said. "It is not electrification or energy efficiency. It is really electrification and energy efficiency goes together."
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