Saturday, June 20, 2009

Energy efficiency certificates (EEC)

According to the European Commission Science for Environment Policy newsletter some EU Member States are considering using Energy Efficiency Certificates schemes.
These EEC schemes impose obligations on a target group, usually energy suppliers, to achieve a certain quantity of 'energy savings' through improvements in efficiency. Projects are awarded certificates for the amount of energy saved and trading may occur between projects and suppliers.
However, a study that examined the effectiveness of these schemes concluded that this is difficult to measure. This study compared different policy measures and, for EEC , if business-as-usual energy use and GHG emissions are higher than expected, the EEC scheme could not reduce emissions to the originally intended level without continual revision of targets.

For more information: Passey, R. and MacGill, I. (2009). Energy sales targets: An alternative to White Certificate schemes. Energy Policy. 37: 2310-2317.

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