Lessons learnt from two long-term agreements on energy-efficiency in industry in Flanders, Belgium

摘要

In Flanders, Belgium, two voluntary schemes or covenants to stimulate energy efficiency in industry are in place. The Benchmarking Covenant targets the energy intensive industry and companies participating in the ETS; it starts in 2002 and ends in 2014. The Auditing Covenant targets medium sized enterprises; starting in 2005 and ends in 2014.The objective of the Benchmarking Covenant is to bring the participating industrial companies to top 10 % most energy efficient plants worldwide by 2012. The objective of the Auditing Covenant is to implement all energy saving measures with a minimal internal rate of return, corresponding with an energy saving potential of about 10 %. The aim of this article is to describe the design and to analyse the operation of both covenants. The description of the design includes an analysis of the political acceptance and a description of the target group, the obligations of the participants, the compensation from the Flemish Government to the participants and the administration of the covenant. The analysis of the operation of the covenants includes an assessment of the number of participants and the industrial energy consumption covered, an analysis of the determination of the target and an assessment of the monitoring results on the energy efficiency improvements and CO_2 reductions. Monitoring results of 2012 indicate that the benchmarking covenant resulted in an 8.1 % improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2002 and that the auditing covenant resulted in a 9.8 % improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2005. Lessons can be learnt from the experiences with the covenants on the metrics to monitor the progress in voluntary agreements on energy efficiency, on whether to impose an energy efficiency target or a commitment to take action and on the relation between the achieved energy efficiency improvements and the energy-intensity of a company. These are useful lessons when designing a new voluntary agreement on energy efficiency.