Energy efficiency represents a key resource for economic and social development, providing substantial benefits to different stakeholders, ranging from the entities which develop energy efficient measures to everyone in society. In addition to cost savings, multiple benefits can be achieved by supporting a better alignment between energy issues and strategic business priorities: e.g., improved competitiveness, profitability, quality, etc. Thus, energy efficiency can be a strategic advantage, not just a marginal issue, for companies. However, most firms, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), face many problems and, in some cases, hostility when trying to effectively implement energy efficiency actions. The most dominant barriers are the access to capital and the lack of awareness (especially in terms of life cycle cost effects). The supply chain viewpoint represents one of the main opportunities for overcoming those barriers and improving energy performance even for weaker companies. Since the current literature on energy efficiency and practical approaches to ensure energy efficiency mainly focus on energy performance on a single-firm basis, this paper aims to provide a systematic review of papers on the integration of energy efficiency in supply chain design and management published in academic journal, thereby defining potential research streams to close the gaps in the literature. A number of literature reviews have been published focusing on specific aspects of sustainable or on green supply chain management; however, to the best of our knowledge, no review has focused on the energy efficiency issue. Firstly, the present paper shows how considering energy consumption in supply chain management can contribute to more energy-efficient processes from a systemic point of view. Then, the review methodology used is defined and the sampled papers are analyzed and categorized based on the different approaches they propose. From these analyses, potential future research streams are outlined.

Attention to energy efficiency is recently experiencing substantial growth. To overcome the several barriers currently existing that represent an obstacle to the successful implementation of the wide set of energy efficiency measures available, the cooperation among members of a supply chain offers a huge potential. In supply chains, in addition to the traditional coordination of the operations, the members may also share financial resources or act jointly on the capital market. This study presents a two-stage supply chain model considering the opportunity to invest in new energy efficient technologies which are affected by learning effects: the member of the supply chain with better energy performance and/or better financial conditions may find it more profitable to invest in the development of the energy efficiency of its partner. The objective of the model is to determine the optimal investment for each supply chain member so as to maximize the Net Present Value of the supply chain. The impacts of the proposed joint decision-making are investigated through some numerical analysis and managerial insights are proposed: the joint decision-making process on the financial flows for the energy efficiency investments results are especially advantageous (up to a 20% increase of the supply chain Net Present Value) when members have different access to capital, which could be the result of different economic conditions in companies’ countries, as well as different credit policies or different credit ratings.