Counting project savings—an alternative way to monitor the results of a voluntary agreement on industrial energy savings

Abstract

In 2008, the Dutch voluntary agreements on industrial energy efficiency faced fundamental changes to their monitoring methodology. Where the old method was based on measuring the improvement of energy use per unit of production, the new method focuses on the energy savings from projects implemented by participating companies. Advocates of the new method claim that it gives a better view of the companies’ efforts to save energy, as it shows their deliberate changes in production processes, whereas opponents emphasise that the relation with ‘real’ energy efficiency is lost. By applying the two methods on the same group of companies, the results can be compared and show to what extent the choice of monitoring method affects the key message to policy makers. Of special interest is the relation between energy and production in the period 2008–2012, a period with large fluctuations in the level of production and energy use as a result of the economic crisis. The data show that energy-saving projects made a significant impact on energy use in the analysis period, although their effect is smaller than that of other factors such as fluctuations in production and in the number of participating companies. The old method shows a result for the period 2005–2013 that is less than half of that of the new method, mainly because of a decrease in efficiency during years of decreasing production. The analysis clearly shows that the two methods do not show the same development of energy efficiency improvement and should be presented as such.