How to measure the overall energy savings linked to policies and energy services at the national level?

The Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services Directive (ESD) of the European Union requires the member states to define and attain an overall target of at least 9% annual energy savings between 2008 and 2016. Even if this target is indicative, this is the first international framework mandating countries to report on their energy savings results and prove achievement of their targets. The directive thus also required the development of harmonised calculation methods that can be used by member states for this proof and reporting. Existing literature covers most of the usual issues related to energy savings evaluation, but mostly looking at single, given energy efficiency programmes or policies. The evaluation objective for the ESD implementation is different, as it aims at accounting for the whole energy savings achieved in a country. Moreover, one of the main difficulties is the diversity in history and experience on this topic among the member states. In this context, the European project EMEEES has worked out an integrated system of bottom-up and top-down methods for the measurement of energy savings. The paper presents the overview of its final results. The proposals, inter alia, include 20 bottom-up and 14 top-down case applications of general evaluation methods. They enable more than 90% of the potential energy savings to be measured and reported. They were used as a starting point by the European Commission to develop the methods recently recommended to the member states. Furthermore, the paper briefly discusses the importance of the quantity to be measured—all or additional energy savings—and the effect of measures implemented before the entering into force of the ESD (‘early action’), and what this meant for the methods to be developed. It compares the main elements of calculation needed to ensure consistent results between bottom-up and top-down methods at the overall national level. Finally, general conclusions are drawn about what could be the next steps in developing an evaluation system that enables a high degree of comparability of results between different countries.