Municipal Utilities and the Promotion of Local Energy Efficiency Projects

This article focuses on the innovation potential of energy efficiency services which emerge from the close relationship between municipal utilities and customers. With the liberalisation of the German energy market in 1998, the municipal utilities faced for the first time the challenge of bonding local business customers in an enduring relationship. At the same time and parallel to a discussion about the rise of energy prices and the ecologic consequences of energy generation, the public placed pressure on the utilities to decrease the use of fossil fuels in energy generation. Energy efficiency services such as contracting have a high potential to serve both goals and to ensure the market position of municipal utilities in the German energy market. Municipal utilities may use the opportunity to achieve these goals via the readjustment of their sales activities and the implementation of innovative energy services. Many customers, especially in the business sector, have at the same time to search for ways to reduce their overhead. Especially those customers with a need for electricity and heat or steam have a high potential to intensify the relationship with their local utility in order to build up energy-efficient supply solutions.