Climbing a new hill: a review of Member States' strategies to meet their energy savings obligation for 2021-2030

The EU and 21 out of 27 Member States achieved their headline 2020 target for energy efficiency in terms of maximum final energy consumption (not to exceed). This was partly due to COVID19. The picture is even more mixed when looking at Member States’ energy savings obligation: 14 Member States met their target of cumulative energy savings over 2014-2020, whereas ten Member States failed, and final data were missing for the three remaining ones (based on Commission’s report).
The Fit-for-55 package brought more ambition for the 2030 targets, including for the energy savings obligation, now Article 8 of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EU) 2023/1791 (EED). New provisions also require Member States to achieve a share of their energy savings among priority groups (energy poverty ringfence), while energy savings from installing or purchasing fossil fuel technologies will progressively be excluded, in line with the EU Green Deal’s objectives of a Just Transition and climate neutrality. This paper reviews the latest data about the previous obligation period (2014-2020) and the current one (2021-2030). Member States are in very diverse situations as regards both their achievements of the 2014-2020 target and their results in 2021, the first year of the new period. When comparing performance averaged over 2018-2020 and 2021, all types of trends can be found, with some countries previously missing their target now achieving more savings, while some countries previously overachieving their target for 2014-2020 are now far from being on track in 2021. It shows that there is little predict ability when looking at overall trends only. This paper summarizes the main changes brought by the EED recast, highlighting the impacts they may have on Mem ber States’ strategies and capacities to meet their revised obligations. All Member States except Cyprus need to increase their rate of new annual savings, some very significantly. Most of them will need to clarify which measures will deliver energy savings among priority groups. Implementing the EED recast should push Member States to act fast and big, in line with the Global Pledge on Renewables and Energy Efficiency signed at COP28. Based on the large differences in strategies and achievements of Member States so far, the paper ends with a discussion of the importance of experience sharing to support Member States to fill their savings gap.