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The Danish Curve Breaker Agreement model – a voluntary agreement to break the electricity consumption curve

Panel: Panel 4. Residential and commercial sectors: delivering lower energy use in buildings

Authors:
Christian Jarby, Manager-Public Sector Affairs, The Danish Electricity Saving Trust, Denmark
Karen Marie Pagh Nielsen, Principal consultant, Alectia A/S, Denmark
Troels Fjordbak, Consultant, IT Energy ApS, Denmark

Abstract

Both the public and private company sectors are continually acquiring more electrically powered equipment. Consequently, electricity consumption has risen by more than 1% per year over the last 10 years in Denmark (Danish Energy Agency, 2008). Curve Breaker Agreements were introduced in Denmark in 2007 by The Danish Electricity Saving Trust, an independent institution led by a Board appointed by the Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy. The agreements commit organisations and companies signing the agreements to reduce their electricity consumption and ‘break the rising electricity curve', typically over a 3-year period.

This paper describes the Curve Breaker Agreement model and analyses the effectiveness of initiatives and solutions in different agreements.

The analysis is based on empirical research covering 115 agreements concluded by 18 March 2009. The research also includes remotely metered electricity consumption data and interviews with agreeing partners.

The results showed that agreements should be concluded at macro level. An important precondition of the agreement follow-up process is that both parties should be able to track the electricity consumption of an individual organisation on a website. 115 agreements have been concluded in about 2 years, and by December 2008 the list of signatories included one third of all Danish municipalities, government ministries and public sector institutions, as well as a number of large private companies. The latest survey of electricity consumption in the Danish public sector indicates that the consumption curve by signatories of Curve Breaker Agreements has generally been broken, and is heading lower.

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