The rule of thumb reigning over the lands of data scarcity: streamlining multiple impacts around energy savings as primary input

Since IEA’s 2014 landmark publication "Capturing the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency", several EU projects and articles
have advanced the concept of multiple impacts (also known as multiple benefits, co-benefits, or ancillary benefits). A gener ous collection of indicators has been developed to quantify and monetise a myriad of impacts. However, this approach has
shown shortcomings, when it comes to the necessary data to apply these indicator sets. As a consequence, these assessments
could generally merely be realised by experts with access to sig nificant data volumes and expert guesses. Yet, in light of the enshrinement of wider benefits into EU legislation (as key component of the Energy Efficiency First Principle under the EED’s Article 3), more practitioners and policymakers will need to assess multiple impacts thorough ly. Therefore, in the course of the MICAT project (Multiple Impacts CAlculation Tool), existing indicator sets have been streamlined to require only energy savings as input data. Thereby, the approach has been drastically simplified to enable a significantly wider group to assess multiple impacts of energy efficiency. While additional data and parameters (i.e. investment costs, energy prices, energy mixes, measure lifetimes, and moneti sation factors) still improve the results’ accuracy, they are not necessary, as the tool can fall back on default values and stand ard conversion equations. This allows users with different data availabilities to receive the best possible results. This paper describes the underlying methodologies and as sumptions taken to develop the streamlined indicator set at the core of the MICATool, the easy-to-use, free, and open-source online tool developed in the framework of the MICAT project. Considering the implications and resulting inaccuracies, as sumptions and fallback values are discussed. Thereby, the paper describes the progress necessary to expand the group of users able to assess the multiple impacts of energy efficiency.