Accelerating the uptake of energy efficiency in industry – a case study of the Australian energy efficiency opportunities program

摘要

The Energy Efficiency Opportunities program requires largeenergy using firms in Australia to conduct energy efficiencyassessments every five years and report publicly on their energyefficiency performance annually.Analysis of public reports from 199 participating corporationsdemonstrates the significant energy savings that arepossible across a wide spectrum of industrial firms. Energyprojects identified and publicly reported by companies (up toDecember 2009) are projected to deliver an average 8.3 % reductionof the assessed energy use. Approximately half of theidentified projects have been implemented so far and if all identifiedprojects are adopted they will contribute a 2.9 % reductionin Australia’s total energy end use.In this paper we analyse the key features of the EEO programand consider how they are intended to influence barriers to theuptake of energy efficiency in firms. To conduct our analysis wedraw on economic, organisational and institutional theory todevelop an analytical model. This categorises barriers accordingto the level at which they are most likely to occur, i.e. at thelevel of an individual decision maker or a project, more widelyacross the organisation or within the network of institutionalstakeholders.We then consider the results of a recent review of the EEOprogram by external consultants, which indicates that barriersto the identification and implementation of energy efficiencyhave been reduced since the start of the EEO program in July2006. However, a number of persistent barriers are also identified.These include a lack of energy data, limited access to capitaland the challenge of gaining management support and sufficientresources to exploit the full benefits of energy efficiencyimprovement. We briefly consider how education and trainingmeasures and the introduction of a carbon price may act as mutuallyreinforcing policies to achieve the shared goal of energyefficiency improvement in industry.