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2011
Conference Paper
Titel
Energy efficiency in Germany: How to crunch the numbers to find meaningful indicators?
Abstract
The EU Energy Services Directive 2006/32/EC (ESD) mandates Member States to develop National Energy Efficiency Action Plans (NEEAPs) that reveal insights and demonstrate measures on how Member States plan to achieve energy efficiency targets. Additional ambitious targets for energy efficiency improvement have been established by the European Union and by some Member States, including Germany. To evaluate whether energy efficiency really follows such ambitious paths, it is essential to closely monitor its development, not only on the macro level but also on a sectoral level. A detailed sectoral analysis helps to reveal the causes and effects of efficiency improvements, i.e. it also allows evaluating countervailing factors that may undermine the success of efficiency measures. Such a detailed sector analysis needs to be based on a system of pinpointing, up-to-date and well documented numbers and indicators. The purpose of this paper is to present such a system of meaningful sectoral and macroeconomic numbers and indicators for the case of Germany. The paper will depict the current state of energy efficiency and past trends in Germany based on a consistent data base and aggregated informative indicators on key figures. The paper aims to inform on the quality of different sets of data, aggregation methods, indicators and will clearly show the discrepancies this may imply for estimation of future trends and projections. The authors conclude that a harmonized set of indicators based on both macro and sectoral analysis by all European countries is highly desirable in order to monitor the progress made on EU level. Those indicators would need to be selected with view of existing statistical sources at national level as comprehensive and frequently updated statistics are a prerequisite to determine meaningful indicators. Therefore, mandating comparable studies in all EU countries would be an important step to generate a European set of energy efficiency indicators to be recommended by the European Commission to Member States. Regular and coherent reporting (requirements) on the national level would facilitate a stringent and consistent impact analysis of efficiency policies on the aggregated EU as well as national levels.
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