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The threat of increased global warming resulting from the use of fossil fuels stresses decision-makers to formulate and adopt policies towards different sectors of the economy. In light of the great earthquake in Japan 2011, energy efficiency also plays an important role in meeting the challenge of power supply shortage. Energy policies towards industry are of particular importance as a major part of the energy in the economy is used in industrial production. The number of papers investigating and presenting experience from energy end-use policies are scarce. Furthermore, for those present, they often only include a very brief analysis. From a public point of view, evaluations of energy programs are of major importance to measure the performance of the programs. From an energy policy designer point of view, it is of major importance to not only see the cost-effectiveness of the policy but also to understand the fundamental mechanisms for the success or failure of an industrial energy program, in order to learn how to improve future programs. The aim of this paper is to present a review of energy end-use policy instrument in Japan and Sweden towards the industrial sector from 1990 to 2014, with special emphasis on industrial SMEs. From the results presented some general conclusions can be made, (1) results show that the cost-effectiveness differs substantially between the evaluated programs, and (2) that from a governmental point of view, subsidies towards energy audit programs seem like the most cost-effective policy. In addition to this (3) the results from the review also stress the importance of a clear strategy for every energy program on how the program is going to be evaluated, ex-ante or ex-post, and how the performance of the program is to be measured. This structure should be included from the start of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish energy audit program is a publicly financed program, mainly targeting small and medium-sized firms to help them finance energy audits. By examining suggested and implemented energy efficiency measures from the energy audits conducted in 241 firms in the program, the aim of this paper is to examine the energy efficiency implementation gap and the cost efficiency of the program. The audits show that the firms' average annual energy efficiency improvement potential is between 860 and 1270 MWh/year which corresponds to a total energy efficiency improvement potential of between 6980 and 11,130 MWh/firm. The implementation rate of the suggested energy efficiency improvement measures in the SEAP is 53%. The program has resulted in investments in energy efficiency improvements between €74,100and €113,000/firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish pulp and paper industry (PPI) must increase energy efficiency to remain competitive on the global market, which has experienced entries from countries with cheaper energy and raw material supplies. Interactions among variables for energy use, production, energy management, electricity price and firm characteristics (FC), in different types of mills, i.e., pulp, paper and integrated mills, in Sweden from 2006 to 2015 indicate that correlations among the studied variables were different in different types of mills. This difference between types of mills seemed to originate partly from varying accessibility to production residue that could be used for energy. For all types of mills, variation of electricity prices did not correlate significantly with energy efficiency during the study period. The studied FC were firm's age, number of employees, number of companies in company group, net sales and profit for the year. Energy efficiency was more affected by the variables characterizing energy and production compared to the variables representing FC. This study also suggested presence of possible discrepancies between FC that were perceived as barriers to energy management towards energy efficiency, according to previous studies, and what was shown by the data combining variables representing energy use, production and FC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large untapped potential for improved energy efficiency in various sectors of the economy. Governmental industrial energy audit programs subsidizing the companies to conduct an energy audit are the most common policy in trying to overcome the energy efficiency gap. Evaluation studies have been carried out to gain knowledge about the success of a completed energy audit policy program. The evaluations were made in different ways and in addition focused on different performance indicators and used different ways of categorizing data. In this article, a literature review has been made of five evaluation studies from different energy audit programs, where the problems of the present incomparability between programs due to differences are discussed. The policy implication of this paper is that new energy audit policy programs must distinguish a harmonized way of categorizing data, both regarding energy efficiency measures and energy end-use. Further, a proposition for a standard for how to evaluate energy audit policy programs is suggested. Conclusions from this study are that important elements, such as the free-rider effect and harmonized energy end-use data, should be defined and included in evaluation studies. A harmonized standard for evaluating audit programs is not least needed within the EU, where member states are obliged to launch audit programs for large enterprises, and preferably also for small and medium-sized enterprises. This paper serves as an important contribution for the development of such a standard in further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]