Keen to cement its position as one of the world's greenest multinationals, Toyota has announced it is to fund a major research project designed to identify the most energy efficient best practices that firms should be embracing.

The company said it will provide a three-year $1.4m (£0.7m) grant to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington to fund the research project.

The center said it was now seeking to collect data direct from leading US firms as it looks to compile a list of the most effective energy efficiency policies from across companies' supply chains, facilities, products and services.

It added that the three-year research project would be accompanied by a year-long communications campaign designed to promote the final report's key findings and the best practices it advocates.

Pew Center president Eileen Claussen said that energy efficiency measures represented the simplest and most effective ways of cutting carbon emissions, but that many firms remained unclear on how best to curb energy use.

"This project is designed to give companies the tools to ramp up efficiency efforts and simultaneously address growing concerns about climate change and skyrocketing energy prices," she said.