dena’s international Energy Efficiency Award – encouraging the replication of best-practice examples in industry

Panel: 1. Programmes to promote industrial energy efficiency

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Dietmar Gründig, Deutsche Energie-Agentur (Dena), Germany
Annegret-Cl. Agricola
Juliane Kammer

Abstract

Uncovering and widely publicizing innovative energy efficiency projects undertaken by industrial com-panies lies at the heart of an awareness-raising campaign run by the German Energy Agency dena. As a means to this end, dena initiated the annual Energy Efficiency Award– an international prize to honour companies which have implemented highly cost-effective projects to increase the energy efficiency of their operations. This approach has proven to be an effective way to encourage the replication of best practices in industry and production.

The idea behind the award is that by illustrating the benefits of energy efficiency other companies will be motivated to imitate those measures. Thus the award serves to drive demand for highly innovative techniques, technologies and related services to cut energy consumption, energy costs and CO2 emissions. To achieve the award’s goals, dena involves a wide range of actors from businesses, politics, civil society, aca-demia and the media.

The proposed paper draws a conclusion on dena’s experiences, the successes as well as challenges of run-ning an international competition on energy efficiency in industry by showing how the influence, criteria and standards of the competition have been developing since 2007 when the Energy Efficiency Award was offered for the first time. Since the 6th Energy Efficiency Award will be awarded on 18/19 September 2012, the paper will also provide insight into the current state of play in terms of participant numbers and appli-cations submitted.

The Energy Efficiency Award is organised as part of the “Initiative EnergieEffizienz” campaign targeting the efficient use of electricity in all consumer sectors which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology. dena offers a wide range of information and advisory services on the topic of energy efficiency in industry including the savings potential of cross-cutting technologies, energy man-agement and best practices.