Corporate Social Responsibility

Energy efficiency is not just an isolated effort by companies to be cost-efficient and ready to compete on a global market. Energy efficiency is also a core target of sustainable economic, ecological and social management which reflects the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of a company towards the society.

CSR is defined by the European Commission as „the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society“ (COM (2011) 681). The Commission encourages that enterprises „should have in place a process to integrate social, environmental, ethical human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders“.

The Impawatt project aims to promote the following points of the European Commission’s CSR agenda:

• “Enhancing the visibility of CSR and disseminating good practices” by a European-wide campaign, combining energy efficiency with CSR aims of companies
• “Improving self- and co-regulation processes” by introducing an energy management system for small and medium sized companies
• “Enhancing market reward for CSR” by publicizing the activities undertaken by participating companies on the Impawatt portal
• “Emphasizing the importance of national and sub-national CSR policies” by providing examples from different member states that will be commonly assessed by the iESA energy management tool and by European user surveys of companies”

Key Documentation of the European Commission’s CSR strategy can be downloaded from the website of the European Commission.