Evaluation of different policy instruments to promote industrial energy efficiency in a national context

摘要

To promote energy efficiency in industry, a variety of policieshave been successfully implemented in the European Union.Besides the EU-ETS with its direct and indirect impacts onindustrial energy efficiency, other instruments such as energysaving funds, energy efficiency obligations (EEOs), fiscal and financialinstruments, subsidies as well as regulative instrumentsand information policies are currently implemented and used.The intensity and the mix of these instruments, however, differsignificantly between the EU Member States. The actual proposalfor a new Energy Efficiency Directive suggests saving obligationsas preferred instrument to promote energy efficiencyamong all sectors. In any case the Directive will lead to furtherimplementation of such policies. Their actual impact, however,depends highly on the national framework. We systematicallyshow the strengths and weaknesses of the main policy instrumentswhich are actually implemented or discussed in order topromote energy efficiency in industry. With a multi-criteria,semi-quantitative approach considering eight main criteriawe evaluate the costs and benefits of these instruments, takingthe example of Germany. Among these criteria are costs,addressable energy saving potentials, market conformity, priceand rebound effects and (re)financing. The quantitative evaluationshows that none of these instruments on their own canexploit all efficiency potentials in industry determined here infull, but that a mix of instruments is necessary. The calculationsalso show that a further development of the currently implementedinstruments in Germany addressing energy efficiencyin industry is in principle sufficient in order to tap the existingsaving potentials. This requires, however, considerable effortswith regard to a further development of regulation, compliancecontrol, budget-funded financial incentives and the widerspread of energy management systems. This option, however, isespecially limited by the restricted availability of public funds.Therefore, the possibility of a budget-independence of thefunding in particular supports a supplementary deploymentof new instruments such as an EEO as part of the future mixof policy instruments addressing energy efficiency in industry.