Impact and process evaluation of the Swedish national energy audit program for small and medium-sized industries

摘要

In April 2006 the EU adopted the so-called Energy End-Useefficiency and Energy Services Directive that gives energy auditprograms a central role for promoting energy efficiency.As a consequence Sweden launched a program to supportimplementations of energy audits in Swedish companies, theso-called energy audit checks, in April 2010. The program isconstructed so that a company that performs an energy auditgets subsidy of 50 % of the audit cost, up to a maximum valueof 3,000 EUR, when performed an approved energy audit. Theprogram targets small and medium sized companies. The aimof this paper is to present both an impact and a process evaluationof the initial phase of this Swedish energy audit program.The results of the process evaluation show the need to e.g. involveregional and municipal actors in the program, a need forformulation of program goals and a need for a standardizedenergy audit tool. The results of the impact evaluation includebottom-up data on potentials and outcome of the programand comparison with other previous programs. 1,000–2,000energy audits are estimated to be approved within the program,which makes it by far the largest energy audit programin Sweden. The energy saving reduction for the 130 energyauditsapprovedand registered in the Energy Agency's databaseso far in the program is 20 %, reported by the participatingfirms as to be implemented. The already funded energyaudits indicate an impact of 237 kWh saved per public EURif all measures reported by the firms to be implemented arein fact implemented. It is estimated that at least 50 % of themeasures reported to be implemented will be carried out. Theex-ante impact evaluation of the program thus reveals a figureof about of 119–237 kWh/EUR.