When efficiency advocates understand the business decision-making perspective and can communicate with management using financial and strategic arguments for energy efficiency and pollution prevention, the case for E2/P2 is greatly strengthened. Making business sense of E2/P2 reduces its perceived risk to management, which may, in turn reduce the hurdle rate (or payback period) that a company requires of an E2/P2 investment. There are no guarantees that management will implement E2/P2 projects even if they make sense from a financial perspective. Other investments or projects may have greater financial returns than E2/P2 projects, capital may be unavailable, or certain projects may not fit with a company’s strategic plan. However, if advocates do not make business sense of E2/P2, it may continue to be perceived by many business people as a warm and fuzzy but costly and unnecessary extravagance.

Since businesses make most decisions based on bottom-line impact, it makes sense to look at energy efficiency and pollution prevention as part of overall ‘efficiency’ (e.g., process efficiency, enhanced productivity) in order to account for all the savings that a business will realize from E2/P2 projects. In order to make a more compelling case for energy efficiency and pollution prevention, it is critical to understand the decision-making process of business management. This means understanding the interrelationships of various forms of efficiency, and measuring costs and benefits so that the financial ramifications of our proposals are fully understood and can be communicated to management in terms with which they can identify. Probably the most effective way to get management’s attention is to not even mention energy efficiency or pollution prevention, but to call it simply “efficiency,” since efficiency has always had a positive connotation in the business community. Combining the strengths of energy efficiency and pollution prevention and viewing them simply as efficiency is an opportunity for both business and environmental advocates to achieve their goals.