Monitoring the energy efficiency service market in Germany

Panel: 7. Monitoring and evaluation

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Ruth Offermann, Prognos AG, Germany
Friedrich Seefeldt, PROGNOS AG, Germany
Markus Duscha, Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg GmbH (ifeu)
Wolfgang Irrek, Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Abstract

There is a large potential for profitable energy efficiency services (EES) for various market actors in Europe. According to estimates by different studies and by the European ChangeBest project, the EES market is expected to grow by several billion Euros per year until 2020. Nevertheless, the EES market needs further acceleration by adjusting and improving the current legal framework in order to reach the EU-target of 20 % energy efficiency improvement until 2020.

Policy decisions, business strategies and business cases of EES providers should be based on sufficient data and information on the market. Moreover, according to Article 14.1ec of the Energy Efficiency Directive, Member States will be obliged to provide “a qualitative review in the framework of the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan regarding the current and future development of the energy services market”.

However, there are several problems for such a monitoring and evaluation of the market: First, there is no category “energy service” or “energy efficiency service” in national statistics. Second, the market is a heterogeneous one, with services ranging from very simple energy efficiency advice by single consultants via services contributing to energy management to complex integrated performance contracting. Third, associations of EES providers themselves have problems to get full market coverage and sufficient information from their members. Fourth, only few publicly available studies on the EES market cause a problem of circular reference.

The paper discusses available data and problems of monitoring and evaluation of the EES market. Based on this, the paper presents a concept for a systematic, regular monitoring of the EES market in Germany commissioned by the German Federal Energy Efficiency Center (BfEE). The concept looks both at the EES supply-side as well as at the EES demand-side. The paper also discusses the transferability of this approach to other European Member States.