Although silicon panels and wind turbines are becoming as fetishised as fashion accessories, in reality the majority of measures to tackle climate change simply stem from high oil prices. Rare is the worker who has not received a management email about computers unnecessarily being left on. Ironically, Comet, the UK’s leading electrical and white goods retailer, recently slashed its fuel bills by 14%, simply by monitoring its energy use more closely and installing smart meters in its 260 outlets. Six-monthly readings were replaced by half-hourly reports tracking usage and identifying which stores were consuming energy unnecessarily. A new management system targets conservation and identifies when to switch appliances off.

“Estimates of energy use can vary wildly from reality. Smart meters allow people to budget more successfully,” says Peter Kennedy, chief executive of BGlobal, the company that supplied smart meters to Comet. He hopes to sweep away as many “dumb meters” as he can in Europe and SE Asia in the next few years.

BGlobal is one of 23 energy efficiency companies that have listed since 2006 in both Europe and the US. This emergent sector includes power grid management, air conditioning, management and investments that capture heat escaping from power plants and data management firms. As energy-efficiency companies are not categorised separately on stock market indices or standard industry classifications, various definitions cut across engineering, information and communication technology (ICT) and other fields.

Research firm New Energy Finance (NEF) says a surge in commercial and domestic demand for these products, stoked by soaring oil prices, has stimulated the sector. NEF values global private equity and venture capital at just under €1bn in 2007 – about half that of solar energy but a 72% jump since 2006. Steve Mahon, chief investment officer at energy investment private equity company Low Carbon Accelerator, says: “Among venture capitalists there’s more interest in the energy-efficiency space.”

Henderson Global, a socially responsible investment (SRI) fund management outfit also sees growth in the sector; last year it gave approval to Alfa-Laval, a French producer of heating equipment, Hexagon, a Swedish data measurement organisation, and Itron, a US smart meter company. While the sector outperformed the Morgan Stanley Capital International index by 24.5% last year, it underperformed it from 2004, with returns of 21.9% compared to average returns of 43.2% for developed countries. This correlates with oil prices, which leapt 25% last year.