Enigin Update - EU Energy Efficiency Needs Big Investment
THE EUROPEAN Union's (EU) aim of increasing energy efficiency 20% by 2020 is way off target and they will need to invest EUR1 trillion to meet its climate change targets.
This is all according to a draft document seen by the Dow Jones Newswire today. The document will be made public later this year and lays out the EU's energy strategy for the next decade.
The strategy will encourage EU members, totalling 27 countries, to increase their efforts to become more energy efficient and come up with new methods of combining public and private funding to finance efficiency developments.
The draft reports that increased energy efficiency and better infrastructure are the EU’s key to modernising Europe's economy, apart making the bloc greener it will also become more competitive, and increase energy security.
The EU has strict rulings to cut CO2 emissions and increases in the use of renewable energy by 2020, but a target of becoming 20% more energy efficient by that year compared with the business-as-usual situation remains a voluntary goal that is "far from being achieved," the draft reports.
As we reported on these pages last month, EU Energy ministers discussed how to get back on course, but there is still no consensus on a binding target, partly because it is very complicated to measure it, the people familiar with the negotiation have told Dow Jones Newswires.
In the draft document, the commission says it will set up "a set of fair and measurable objectives and indicators to monitor the progress made in energy efficiency." The building sector has one of the highest energy-saving potential, it adds.
The draft document advises that major investment will be needed, EUR1 trillion, for the EU to get on track to reach their own energy efficiency goal.
Enigin Distributors across Europe are already helping commerce, industry and the public sector to reduce energy demand by installing the real-time energy management system Eniscope, from Enigin, along with Enigin PLC's intelligent energy saving products.
