Project

Energy efficiency is the key pillar of all recent EU legislation, which has been stated in the form of the Energy Efficiency First Principle. Many studies have shown that energy efficiency offers the most cost-effective options for meeting global greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. This central role has been confirmed:

• in the 2030 EU Climate and Energy framework;
  
• in the legislation on the Energy Union with its five dimensions;
  
• in the Energy Union Package "Clean energy for all Europeans", which included:
  • amendments to the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) to align the energy efficiency framework with the 2030 perspective;
  • a proposal for a regulation on an integrated Governance framework to streamline the existing reporting and planning obligations with the Integrated Energy and Climate Plans;
  • an EU efficiency target for 2030 of at least 32.5% and an EU target for renewables of at least 32%.
    

The Governance Regulation also requires the Commission to issue recommendation to Member States, which threaten overall target achievement in the EU. If Member States individually or collectively risk not meeting the EU energy efficiency target, the Commission may issue recommendations to Member States and propose EU measures to ensure the achievement of the Union's 2030 target for energy efficiency.

The project has the four objectives:

• Development of an energy efficiency database in synergy with the MURE database (www.odyssee-mure.eu).
• Development of a bottom-up evaluation tool which allows establishing direct and multiple benefits of energy efficiency measures while taking into account rebounds, multiplier effects, free-rider effects and policy interactions. It also sets out how to combine the bottom-up analysis of measure with the EU-wide scenario runs based on the PRIMES model.
• Analysis of measure impacts, their interactions and of gaps to the 2020 (20% energy efficiency target) and 2030 targets (32.5% energy efficiency target).
• Development of a methodology to develop gap-filling measures at EU level based on good practices national policies. These measures also serve to cope with a higher energy efficiency target, following the requirements of the Green Deal of the EU Commission.
  

The project combined information on measure impacts from different databases (MURE database, Art. 7 database), as well as information from the National Energy and Climate Plans NECPs, submitted in 2019/2020. In addition, interviews with national experts in 18 EU countries were carried out to check for implementation deficits, rebounds and interaction of measures. Further, to select appropriate measures for gap filling, a multi-criteria approach was developed, combining criteria such as measure impacts, cost efficiency, semi-quantitative criteria on implementation deficits, rebounds and interaction of measures, as well as on barriers, enabling factors and success factors.

The developed assessment tool was implemented in Excel with a dashboard allowing to provide graphical overviews on measure impacts, gaps for the Member States (by comparing with target scenarios), as well as contributions from European measures such as the Energy Performance Directive for Buildings EPBD, different articles of the Energy Efficiency Directive EED, Ecodesign and Labelling Directives. A preliminary advanced version was also developed in a web-based design.

October 2019 until October 2021

European Commission/DG Ener

• E3-Modelling. Prof. P. C. Capros
• Enerdata, France
• IEECP
• Trinomics