Active Energy, Reactive Energy or just Energy?
Motors tend to be the biggest load in the industry and their efficiency must increase with Hp size towards 96% as mandated by stds.  The no-load current may be from 10 to 25% of rated but is mostly reactive core excitation current to magnetically couple the rotor and stator. 

Since the Power factor, pf is the ratio of real / apparent power or current, the pf goes down with load/rated load.  Since reactive energy is stored in the rotating machines it draws some conductive loss in the grid. But more importantly, it raises the apparent load current which must be allocated by costs of the distribution network by selling or buying reserve power to meet the apparent load.  

Although load capacitors are expensive as passive power factor (PFC) correction on small motors, it is a major cost-saving on industries using >= 50  Hp motors.  So here it is important.  Motor inductance causes the current to lag by 90 degrees and capacitance causes current to lead voltage by 90 degrees.

Also, IEC has mandated high pf ratings for high power AC-DC SMPS to reduce the cumulative effects of many AC-DC power supplies. (98% >=100W ) So pf does matter here.

Reactive energy is the inertia stored to get up to and maintain speed yet not consumed to do work while producing real conductive losses from friction and magnetic excitation current needed to create a low impedance real force when a load occurs.

In effect, all big industries with poor power factor pay extra unless they manage their own PF with compensation then get a discount and verified with meters to measure it.

Ref: https://www.cui.com/catalog/resource/power-factor.pdf