Search

The industrial sector accounts for 35%–40% of total energy use in Sweden, where 30% of industrial energy use comes from non-energy-intensive small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This sector has not historically received much attention when it comes to improving energy efficiency due to limited resources, lower priority given to energy issues, rather small energy-saving potential for a single company, and great heterogeneity of the SMEs. However, the accumulative energy-saving potential for SMEs can be quite high and achieved at very low costs, partly because most improvements are found in support processes and are relatively easy to implement. Various public policies, such as industrial energy audit programmes, serve as a means for overcoming barriers to energy efficiency in the sector of SMEs. One example is the Swedish Energy Audit Programme (SEAP), a stand-alone audit programme functioning between 2010 and 2014. The aim of this paper is to examine the programme by means of process and impact evaluation. The results show that the programme resulted in annual net energy efficiency savings equivalent to 340 GWh/year or 6% of the 713 participating companies' energy end use. The implementation rate in the audit programme was 53%. On average, the public cost of one implemented measure was € 700. Derived from the amount of energy saved, the audit programme's annual cost-effectiveness is €7/MWh saved energy. This paper adds a significant scientific contribution due to the method used for evaluation. Multiple company visits and availability of quantitative data from 713 companies gave the possibility to address the additionality effects and estimate net energy savings more precisely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Industrial energy programs such as energy audit programs and long-term agreements (LTAs) are one of the most common means of promoting energy efficiency in industry. As a result of the European Energy End-Use Efficiency and Energy Services Directive from 2006, the Swedish Government Bill proposed a national energy program towards industrial small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using more than 500MWh energy annually. The aim of this paper is to present the structure and design of the program, adopted in 2010, the logics in brief behind the structure, as well as an ex-ante evaluation of the program’s cost-effectiveness. The paper is aimed towards the part of the program involving industry, i.e. not the part involving companies within service and sales etc. The proposed design primarily includes a subsidized energy audit with some minor LTA-elements, such as the need to report results from the energy audit, to present a plan over which measures to conduct, and after three years present which measures that were implemented. The ex-ante evaluation of the program shows a cost-effectiveness of 0.25–0.50Eurocents/kWh, yielding savings of about 700–1 400GWh annually. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]