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

From 2006 to 2009, the European project EMEEES, with 21 partners and co-ordinated by the Wuppertal Institute, has worked out an integrated system of bottom-up and top-down methods for the measurement of energy savings. This is to support the implementation of Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services Directive of the European Union. The Directive required the development of harmonised calculation methods to be used by Member States to prove that they attain the overall target of 9 % annual energy savings by 2016. The paper presents the overview of the final results on the methods developed by the EMEEES project. 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 and were used as a starting point by the European Commission to develop the final methods to be used by Member States – a still ongoing process. Furthermore, the paper briefly discusses the importance of the quantity to be measured – all or additional energy savings – and the effect of past measures (‘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 from the findings of EMEEES about what could be the next steps in developing an evaluation system that enables a high degree of comparability of results between different countries.