Effect of risk aversion on supply chain performance and energy contracting design with financial asymmetry

Abstract Energy performance contracting is a contractual arrangement between clients and energy service companies. At present, it is a key tool to implement energy efficiency measures in the existing supply chain management. In this paper, we study the efficiency of the energy performance contracting in a supply chain including one risk‐averse supplier and two risk‐neutral manufacturers with financial asymmetry. The manufacturer with weak finance has no funds to order enough raw materials; thus, the supplier offers a trade credit financing to ensure her normal operation and participate in the competition with the financially strong manufacturer in the market. However, neither manufacturer has extra capitals to develop emission reduction activities. Therefore, the upstream supplier acts as an energy service company and provides an energy performance contracting for two downstream manufacturers to reduce carbon taxes. We analyze important factors such as risk aversion coefficient, carbon tax saving sharing ratio, and variable cost coefficient to explore whether and which manufacturer the supplier should select to provide an energy performance contracting. The results show that, when the risk aversion is high, the supplier will not provide energy‐saving services for any manufacturer. When the risk aversion and the variable cost are low, the supplier tends to offer an energy performance contracting for the manufacturer with weak finance, because the supplier can get more utility from higher wholesale price. However, with the increase of costs, the supplier with a low risk aversion is more willing to provide emission reduction services for the financially strong manufacturer. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis demonstrates that there is always a Pareto region to optimize the utility of supplier and manufacturers, when the supplier provides energy performance contracting for both manufacturers.