Evaluation of free-of-charge energy audits

Kirsten Dyhr-Mikkelsen, SRC International A/S
Peter Bach, Danish Energy Authority

Keywords

evaluation, energy audits, econometric analysis, case-study

Abstract

The Danish government is currently reviewing the publicly funded energy efficiency activities in Denmark, and evaluations are being carried out to provide the necessary basis for decision-making. One of the largest activities is the free-of-charge energy audit provided to all enterprises with an electricity consumption above 20 MWh/year by the electricity network companies. An evaluation of this activity was carried out in 2004. It was the first full scale evaluation of the activity.

Free-of-charge energy audit program has existed since the early 1990's and approximately 13 million EUR is being spent annually on this activity. Apart from the energy audit itself, the program also aims at promoting other energy efficiency activities including various campaigns and more permanent offers such as the A-club and voluntary agreements.

The primary aim of the evaluation was to establish the achieved net electricity savings as well as the customer satisfaction and review the present organisational and monitoring set-up.

The evaluation employed three approaches:

A review of existing material and databases and a survey among auditors (background).
Graphic and econometric net-impact analyses based on statistical information on the electricity consumption of participants and non-participants (macro-level).
Ten case studies of different types of enterprises (micro-level).

The paper will present the evaluation methodology and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these in addition to a presentation of some of the evaluation results.