How can multiple impacts of energy efficiency policies be quantified?

Peer-reviewed paper 4-178-26

Implementing energy efficiency policies remain a cornerstone to achieving energy and climate objectives across the EU. While energy efficiency measures result in wider benefits, these can be difficult to quantify as required by the revised Energy Efficiency Directive (EU/2023/1791) Article 3 (EED). The MICATool provides an online tool to effectively quantify the multiple impacts of energy efficiency policies and support national reporting to the EED. Using national showcases from Germany, this paper demonstrates how the MICATool can quantify and monetise the impacts for various social, economic and environmental indicators, e.g. the reduction in health impacts, alleviation of energy poverty, impacts on import dependence, employment and GDP, or reduction in additional generation capacity required. The national showcases focus on three energy efficiency programs targeted at different sectors (residential, transport, industry) giving a broader overview of the analysis of multiple impacts of energy efficiency as well as the implementation of the energy efficiency first principle. Using input data from existing ex-post evaluations of the measures in these programs for our analysis, the results demonstrate which wider benefits to society can be linked to each measure and how their respective monetisation can be assessed for a cost-benefit analysis. This paper demonstrates how the methodological framework of the MICATool can support a simplification for Member States to implement EE1^st and reporting accordingly thereby enabling informed decision-making to find the most beneficial path to climate neutrality for society as a whole.