The technologies already exist. They save money, strengthen competitiveness, improve energy security, cut emissions, and often pay for themselves surprisingly quickly. Yet despite decades of technological progress, energy efficiency remains one of the world's most overlooked climate solutions.
From left: Julia Souder, CEO, LDES Council; Anna Hall, Head of Public Affairs, Energy Division, Alfa Laval; Mario Giordana, Global Head of Public & Government Affairs, Signify; Andréa Haag, VP Sustainability, Munters; Nick Nuttall, program host.
That's the paradox of energy efficiency. It is widely regarded as one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective ways to reduce emissions, yet it rarely captures public attention. Unlike a wind turbine or a solar farm, energy efficiency has no obvious symbol. It is, by definition, invisible.
That is precisely why We Don't Have Time, together with Alfa Laval and the Energy Efficiency Movement, launched the Energy Efficiency Action initiative during London Climate Action Week in June. The initiative has a simple ambition: to make the world's most overlooked climate solution impossible to overlook. ”This is exactly why we from the Energy Efficiency Movement support the Energy Efficiency Action initiative”, said Mike Umiker, Managing Director of the Energy Efficiency Movement, a global, non-profit network of over 600 companies across 49 countries and 29 industries. ”The technology exists, implementation is the limiting factor."
That single sentence captures one of the greatest frustrations of the energy transition.
According to the International Energy Agency, doubling the global rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030 is essential to achieving international climate and energy goals. Moreover, at the UN Climate Conference COP28 in Dubai in 2023, the world actually committed to doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements from around 2% to over 4% every year until 2030. Yet progress remains far too slow.
Around the world, companies are recovering industrial waste heat, replacing inefficient equipment, optimizing factories with AI, upgrading buildings with smart lighting and dramatically reducing electricity demand. The technologies are proven. The economics often make perfect sense. Yet deployment remains far too slow.
Broadcast host and moderator Nick Nuttall believes part of the problem is psychological.
"People like shiny new wind turbines. They like beautiful new solar panels," he said. "Efficiency is much harder to see."
His solution is surprisingly simple.
"If we could visualize all that wasted energy pouring into the atmosphere, I think we could probably deal with it much faster."
Making the invisible visible is exactly what Energy Efficiency Action hopes to do. Rather than discussing energy efficiency in abstract terms, the initiative showcases real projects already operating around the world, demonstrating that the transition is no longer about waiting for tomorrow's breakthrough. It is about scaling today's solutions.
According to the latest data presented during the session, 98 percent of companies are already investing – or planning to invest – in energy efficiency. Yet significant barriers remain.
"It's not just the money," Umiker explained. "It's actually the data... and also the skills."
Professor Francesco Corvaro, Italy's Special Envoy for Climate Change and Professor of Thermal Science at the Università Politecnica delle Marche, argued that energy efficiency should not primarily be viewed as an environmental issue.
"If we are able to reduce the need for kilowatt-hours, this is important not only for the environment," he said. "First of all, for our wallet. In Italy, we understood this very well because the price of energy normally is very high. So all the money that we are able to invest in the efficiency, not only in buildings, but also in the companies is crucial. Because if we are able to reduce the needs of kilowatt-hour, this could be important not only for the environment or for the production, but first of all for ourselves, because we are able to reduce our bills.”
He also pointed to several reasons why deployment remains slower than it should.
”Sometimes it's tough because we have to renovate some buildings that has a historical importance, which means you don't have all the possibilities that you should have. Sometimes it's a problem of investment and incentives. From the government’s side it is important to support some applications, like the use of the heat pumps. Sometimes there is a lack of education. It is therefore important to speak about this, and to describe the positive aspects of these solutions.”
Screenshot of the Energy Efficiency Action home page, featuring a large number of energy efficiency solutions that are already up and running across industries and sectors around the world.
If the barriers are well understood, so are many of the solutions.
Andréa Haag, Vice President Sustainability at Munters – a global leader in energy-efficient climate control solutions – highlighted a hyperscale data centre in Odense, Denmark, where waste heat recovered from server cooling is now used to provide district heating to approximately 11,000 homes.
"I think that is quite amazing," said Andréa Haag. "It's a technology and a system that should be applied more often."
She argued that scale is becoming just as important as speed.
"We also need to illustrate the scale," she said. "That becomes real money and real emissions."
Building on the same example, Anna Hall, Head of Public Affairs for Alfa Laval's Energy Division, explained how industrial heat pumps upgrade low-temperature waste heat so it can be reused by district heating systems. She also highlighted advances in liquid cooling that can reduce cooling demand in data centres by 50 percent.
"The solutions exist," Anna Hall said. "That is not the problem. It's implementation."
The discussion also highlighted the broader role of energy efficiency across the energy system.
Julia Souder, CEO of the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, described projects that recover waste heat, capture industrial steam and improve grid flexibility through long-duration energy storage.
"The market is starting to provide," she said, pointing to a growing portfolio of commercial projects already delivering results.
For Mario Giordano, Global Head of Public & Government Affairs at global lighting company Signify, the numbers tell the story. Lighting still accounts for roughly 9 percent of global electricity consumption, but rapid adoption of LED technology has already cut that dramatically over the past decade. The next frontier, he argued, is upgrading existing buildings with connected lighting and sensors.
"With some quick wins," Giordano said, "we can reduce a lot of energy consumption."
Despite representing very different industries, the speakers converged on one conclusion: energy efficiency cannot succeed in isolation. It must be developed alongside electrification, renewable electricity, storage and smarter infrastructure.
"Energy efficiency has the role to reduce the demand. Electrification has the role to shift the demand. Renewables have the role to generate the clean energy. This is the perfect ecosystem”, Giordiano said.
”And they need to work together. They're not independent."
Anna Hall captured the same idea in a single sentence.
"Double down on energy efficiency, triple up on renewables, and electrify now."
Perhaps that is the real significance of Energy Efficiency Action. The world does not need to invent another miracle technology before emissions can start falling faster. It already has thousands of proven solutions quietly delivering results in factories, buildings, data centres and cities across the globe.
The challenge now is making sure those solutions stop being invisible—and start becoming the new normal.
That is the ambition behind Energy Efficiency Action: to help bring proven, scalable energy efficiency solutions into the spotlight and inspire faster implementation around the world.
LEARN MORE
💚 Do you have energy efficiency solutions and want to join the Energy Efficiency Action Initiative? Get in touch with our We Don’t Have Time’s Partner Manager Christina Carlmark to learn more. Email: [email protected] 💚 Take Energy Efficiency Action and learn about existing, scalable energy efficiency solutions that are already up and running.
ABOUT THE SESSION
The live-recorded session Energy Efficiency Action: The Initiative was held at the We Don’t Have Time studio at Sustainable Ventures' workspace, County Hall, London, UK, during London Climate Action Week in June 2026.
Panelists:
- Professor Francesco Corvaro, Special Envoy Climate Change, Italy
- Anna Hall, Head of Public Affairs Energy Division, Alfa Laval
- Andréa Haag, Vice President Sustainability, Munters
- Mario Giordano, Global Head of Public & Government Affairs, Signify
- Julia Souder, CEO, LDES Council
