What makes a good policy? Guidance for assessing and implementing energy efficiency policies

Panel: 2. Energy efficiency policies: What delivers?

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Lena Tholen, Wuppertal Institut for Climate Environment and Energy, Germany
Dagmar Kiyar, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Germany
Maike Venjakob, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Germany
Chun Xia, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Germany
Stefan Thomas, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Germany
Vera Aydin, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Germany

Abstract

Which factors are crucial to successfully design and implement a ‘good practice’ policy to increase the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances? This is one of the main challenges for the new web platform bigee.net that provides guidance on good practice policies.

In this paper we examine the question what ‘good practice’ is by presenting a multi-criteria assessment scheme to analyse different policies worldwide. The assessment scheme contains a set of criteria addressing key factors leading to the success of a policy as well as its outcomes: a good policy addresses all market players and barriers, avoids lost opportunities and lock-in effects, has ambitious and regularly updated energy efficiency levels, and spill-over effects. Other criteria are high energy savings and the calculated cost-effectiveness.

The assessment scheme provides a standardised data collection approach, which paves the way for both qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Furthermore, it can help policy-makers to transfer a successful policy.

The development of the scheme is based on a literature review of worldwide implemented policies and measures that promote energy-efficiency of buildings and appliances. Criteria were operationalized, including a ranking between 0 and 10. The ranking is a decisive factor whether the policy qualifies as good practice. To demonstrate the practicability of this scheme, the paper analyses a good practice example according to the assessment scheme: Energy-Efficient Refurbishment and EnergyEfficient Construction programmes of the German public bank KfW.