Integrating policies for renewables and energy efficiency: Comparing results from Germany, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland

The integration and simultaneous consideration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and Rational Use of Energy (RUE) heat policies belong the major challenges for building a sustainable energy system. In this context, the following questions arise: How will the take-up of energy efficiency measures in the building stock develop and how will this affect the energy demand for heating? How can promotion schemes for demand side measures (DSM) influence the investment in energy efficiency measures in the building stock? How can these policies be optimised? How do renewable and energy efficient technologies and promotion schemes interact? This paper provides a comparative analysis of these questions for the cases of Germany, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland.. These regions have been the subject of investigations using the Invert simulation tool. Invert is based on detailed bottom-up modelling of the building stock and corresponding heating and domestic hot water systems. The impact of energy price scenarios and promotion schemes can be simulated in a dynamic framework. The scenarios show that despite different structures in the heating systems, applied energy carriers and the building stock as a whole, in all three investigated regions improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings can be excepted until 2020. Due to the current level of energy prices, this is the case even in scenarios without promotion schemes. Without any policies heating energy demand will decrease by about 5-10% whereas ambitious policies can achieve reductions of 20% and more up to 2020. In the three investigated regions quite different traditions of RES and RUE policies can be observed. Besides the current energy system, building standards, current state of RES systems and existing potentials this difference in policy culture and traditions turns out to be a major impact parameter for the future desing of RES and RUE heat policies.