Study on the Competitiveness of the European Companies and Resource Efficiency

Resource efficiency is one of the main challenges the European Union is facing at the moment. In Europe, various resources are subject to depletion or are not necessarily extractable. In response to these challenges, national and EU-wide regulations and policy initiatives have been developed to guide the European economy towards more resource efficiency and environmental sustainability.
For the European companies, inaccessibility of resources leads to high dependence on imports and higher production costs compared to their international competitors, who face less stringent environmental policies. In the face of these challenges, the European companies are adopting several measures to increase the efficiency of the resources they use.
In the light of this background, the study on the “Competitiveness of the European Companies and Resource Efficiency” aims at understanding the issues that European companies face with regards to “resource efficiency”. The study set forth five main questions:

What are the drivers that trigger companies to invest in resource efficiency?
What are the measures (business practices and strategies) that companies adopt in order to increase resource efficiency?
How do companies monitor/measure their resource efficiency performance?
What policy measures can be taken to incentivise greater resource efficiency?

Please find the report attached.