Energy efficiency projects

Project description and aims

IMPEL ran a series of projects in relation to energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency in permitting and inspections (2010 – 2012)

Energy is a priority issue within the European Union. The EU Climate Change and Energy Package foresees an increase in energy efficiency of 20% and a reduction of greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. Since the 2002/2003 Finnish led IMPEL project on energy efficiency, a current evaluation has shown that only minor changes have occurred in the consideration of energy efficiency issues in permitting and supervising procedures. The project identified 7 main challenges concerning energy efficiency:

1. In the IPPC directive it is not stipulated how energy efficiency should be addressed
2. Information on energy efficiency in sector BREFs is not concrete and precise enough. The horizontal BREF on energy efficiency is complex and has not been utilised
3. There is a lack of technical expertise in authorities and companies
4. There is a lack of, or only occasional cooperation between, energy and environmental authorities
5. There is no general approach in member states to handle the item of energy efficiency in permit revision
6. There are problems with the definition of system boundaries
7. There is unclear influence of other instruments like voluntary agreements, Energy Management Systems, tax and ETS-systems on energy efficiency of installations.

For a step-by-step improvement of the situation in permit and inspection authorities participants of the workshop and the project team made proposals for the future work of IMPEL in the field of energy efficiency. Good practices were identified in relation to dealing with energy efficiency in permitting and inspection: The project showed that these good practices are not in yet place in many member states.

Energy efficiency in environmental permits (2002)

The general principle of efficient use of energy is stated in Article 3 of the IPPC Directive. This principle is new for environmental permitting, and Member States have some problems with implementing it. The project consisted of a survey, studies of relevant documents and a seminar. The main objectives of the project were:

• to investigate different opinions on how energy efficiency can be regulated in IPPC permits;
  to make a study on how energy efficiency is dealt with in the existing documents, the BREFs and voluntary environmental management schemes;
• to examine how voluntary environmental management schemes and energy saving agreements can be linked to the legal obligations in environmental permitting;
• to study the co-operation between environmental and energy administrations in the implementation of the IPPC directive; and
• to study the role of the authorities in the assessment of energy efficiency in applications and environmental permitting of large installations.

In the project the good practices were found in relation to the main objectives. Some of the issues that were addressed practical guidances to clarify and define energy efficiency, information exchange between operator and authorities to create good permit applications, concrete examples of more or less binding permit conditions, the use the BREFs and self-monitoring under the precondition that the inspector can influence the monitoring practices of the operator.