Understanding and addressing the client’s needs: how can we frame energy efficiency?

Panel: 6. Business models to improve industrial efficiency, global perspective

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Hans Nilsson, FourFact AB, Sweden
Charlotte Ruhbaum, Deutsche Unternehmensinitiative Energieeffizienz e.V. (DENEFF), Germany

Abstract

The problem with the dissemination and deployment of energy efficiency to the market – that is far lower than it should rationally be – is that the framing of the offers to the customer is not fully in accordance with the customer’s capabilities to handle complex technologies and services. This applies not only to private households but also to industrial clients, which – in particular as SMEs – do not have the internal know-how to handle these complexities. The technologies are per se and individually fairly simple but the combinations are complex to put together, install and operate. The burden of proof that a change in installations is a clever choice has been put on the customer and less on the supplier of the technologies and services. The supplying market and its actors must frame their products and services better and do so in a way that the customer can understand and accept. This transformation of the market also needs support in policies which nudge the market into the right direction.