Evaluating energy efficiency policies and measures

Tudor Constantinescu, Energy Charter Secretariat, Belgium
Rod Janssen, Energy Consultant, United Kingdom

Keywords

theory and practice, qualitative and quantitative analysis, evaluation cost and effort, institutional capacity

Abstract

Energy efficiency policies are gaining momentum throughout Europe by means of EU-wide directives and other national initiatives. Measures are developed to implement these policy instruments, but to what extend do they succeed?

There is a clear need for both ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of energy efficiency measures to ensure that plans are developed in a cost–effective measure and results are bringing more benefits than costs.

A number of factors have led to an increased need to monitor, analyse and evaluate quantitatively the impact of energy efficiency measures. Amongst these are:

the need to monitor progress on achieving energy use and carbon emissions targets;
across Europe, there is a move to assess the macro economic effects of proposed policy measures via regulatory impact assessments and cost benefit analyses;
Ex ante evaluation is in line with the European Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive which aims to ensure that the environmental consequence across the EU are assessed before any action is taken;
there is a general view that supporting demand-side measures on an equal basis with supply-side measures is difficult within restructured, liberalised energy markets. Evaluation allows an equitable consideration of the best overall mix of measures to be made.

The proposed paper will look into current evaluation methods based on recent Energy Charter and IEA analysis, into how it works in practice, and will try to provide a review of the approaches that proved to be successful in evaluation of energy efficiency policies and measures internationally.