Building an effective energy efficiency governance in EU
In February 4, 2011 the EU leaders met
to discuss the European “Energy 2020”
strategy, which set, inter alia, future
priorities on energy policy and market.
As this “Energy Summit” was
approaching, the debate among
Member States on the adoption of a
binding energy efficiency target
quickly revamped. Indeed, despite the
EU already committed to a 20 percent
reduction in energy consumption by
2020, this is the only target included in
the “20-20-20 package” which is not
binding. As a consequence of the
huge differences among Member
States on this issue, the Council decided to postpone to 2013 the
revision of the implementation of the
target previously planned in 2012.
However, according to the
International Energy Agency (IEA),
energy efficiency is actually the most
important element for meeting the 450
ppm CO2eq Scenario, required to limit
average temperature rise to 2°C.
This energy efficiency contribution will
come from three main sources: market
mechanisms, sectoral agreements and
national energy efficiency policies.
Despite OECD countries have made
substantial progress in developing and
implementing energy efficiency
actions, even those with the most
advanced policies will remain on
trajectories that limit them to achieving less than half of the efficiency savings
needed by 2020 [World Energy Outlook 2009, OECD/IEA, Paris].
Through the
evaluation of case studies, survey and
interviews, IEA concludes that these
unsuccessful outcomes are mainly due
to the lack of an effective system of
energy efficiency governance. For this
reason, the report analyses the three
key aspects of energy efficiency
governance and proposes a number
of enabling frameworks, institutional
arrangements and co-ordination
mechanisms, that would contribute to
improve European energy efficiency
policy success…
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