Efficiency paves the way for renewables to achieve decarbonization within the EU’s climate targets.
Europe is bringing CO2 emissions down, by 8% last year, with two powerful strategies: expanding renewables and reducing energy demand. While renewables often garner the spotlight, energy efficiency has an equally vital role to play in Europe’s decarbonization and energy security.
However, energy reductions require good planning. In this article, we delve into how energy efficiency policies can effectively steer this downward trend, and we introduce a new online tool to measure its benefits.
Energy efficiency unlocks many strategic doors
Firstly, energy efficiency is a cornerstone of the EU’s triple climate target architecture – emissions reductions, renewables, and efficiency goals, all of which reinforces and enables one another. Within this interplay, efficiency paves the way for renewables to achieve decarbonization.
Secondly, amidst energy insecurity in the EU, efficiency offers a clear solution to cut reliance on energy imports. While scaling up renewables is critical in the long run, deployment takes time. In the short term, efficiency is crucial for cutting dependence on fossil fuels from petrol states.
Beyond cost savings, it improves air quality, creates jobs, reduces energy poverty, increases assets value, and more.
Finally, using less energy to achieve the same results yields great economic benefits for administrations, industries, and households. Beyond cost savings, it improves air quality, creates jobs, reduces energy poverty, increases assets value, and more.
What is efficiency about?
Energy efficiency is about the various measures taken to reduce wasteful energy consumption, from building insulation improvements to the use of more efficient appliances.
Energy efficiency is already integral to ongoing market transformations in Europe. Heat pumps using renewables are up to 5-7 times more efficient than gas and hydrogen boilers respectively, in terms of primary energy consumption.
Electric cars are 60-70% more efficient than combustion vehicles. Electrifying our economy with current technologies can already achieve savings given the intrinsic and immense energy losses from fossil fuel combustion.
Dangerous distractions
Despite the introduction of an efficiency-first principle and compulsory targets in the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, improved energy-savings is not yet a given.
The savings resulting from Ecodesign and Energy Label, for instance, have been so major that all large economies have followed.
The focus on unrealistic, ‘cure-all’ technologies is distracting demand-side actions. The EU Commission’s recently proposed 2040 climate targets, for instance, have been criticized for overselling carbon capture and storage, which many consider costly and unproven technology. EU funds to be invested into Small Modular Reactors have also been questioned as many experts consider them too costly and nascent to make a substantial impact on climate change.
On the contrary, energy efficiency with renewables has proven to be climate-effective over the years. The savings resulting from Ecodesign and Energy Label, for instance, have been so major that all large economies have followed.
Pressure to plan
The Paris Agreement Compatible (PAC) scenario, a reliable decarbonization model, suggests the EU can nearly halve its energy demand to achieve climate neutrality by 2040.
The urgency to meet efficiency and renewable targets is straining ministries and local governments, who often lack resources for modeling and planning demand-side measures.
While the ‘Fit for 55’ package has spurred energy efficiency planning at national and local levels, such as for heating transition and building renovations, the urgency to meet efficiency and renewable targets is straining ministries and local governments, who often lack resources for modeling and planning demand-side measures.
Simulating energy savings
Decision-makers are increasingly relying on energy modelling tools to move the transition forward. REFEREE, the latest free online energy planner under development, will help users to quantify the socio-economic impacts of efficiency policies in a specific region or country.
For example, users will be able to determine how many jobs a member state could create by increasing the annual rate of building renovations, how the air quality index could improve by implementing energy-saving measures in industry, buildings, and transportation, or how much public money could be saved by switching to more efficient public lighting.