Evaluating multi-measure schemes for enhancing energy efficiency: The German energy efficiency fund

The Energy Efficiency Fund established in 2011 was the largest cross-sectoral funding source for improving energy efficiency in Germany. It provided financing to more than 20 national policy measures from across all sectors. Earlier publications have covered methodological aspects related to the evaluation of the Fund and the measures within. This contribution focuses on the overall impact of the Fund and seeks to point out aggregation issues in such a multi-measure scheme. For this purpose, a nine step process is followed to evaluate and aggregate quantified measures within the Fund. In terms of net results in 2017, the Fund achieved at least cumulated savings in terms of GHG emissions of 0.92 million tonnes CO2-eq., final energy savings of 2.7 TWh and annual reductions of energy costs of 171 million Euro. This is after adjusting gross savings for free-rider, pull-forward and follow-up effects and under the consideration of interactions between individual measures. In terms of aggregation issues, experience from the evaluation underlines that transparent impact models, clear views on interdependencies of measures and well-defined targets are helpful assets in the evaluation of multi-measure schemes. In addition, it is underlined that despite the harmonization of the evaluation process, differences in the implementation can hardly be avoided. Thus, transparency on the chosen implementation practice is advisable when presenting the results of such multi-measure schemes.