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Euractiv note:

New energy standards for home boilers entering into force this month are expected to take offline the equivalent of 47 Fukushima-type nuclear power stations in Europe by 2020, according to official EU data compiled by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

The stricter Ecodesign standards for home boilers – and corresponding labelling coming alongside – will enter into force on 26 September, after years of gruelling negotiation between the European Commission and industry representatives.

The Euractiv post explains, how these energy savings are related to fuel poverty and what governments need to do to rip the respective impacts, how effects on energy imports are and how this may even contribute to limit financing terrorism…

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COMBI researcher Nora Mzavanadze from University of Manchester will be one of the keynote speakers at the SSPCR 2015 conference in the thematic session 3 on “Benefits, costs and opportunities of urban transition” toward a more smart and sustainable dimension: accounting and assessment of values and trade-offs within the decision making processes.

Have a look at the program and find out about the conference tracks.

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The UNEP DTU Partnership has just launched a report entitled “The Multiple Benefits of Measures to Improve Energy Efficiency”.
The report combines energy modelling with a survey of 25 national programmes, to provide an overview of the various benefits associated with improvements in energy efficiency. It is the first study providing comparable country- and sector-specific forecasts of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and macro-economic variables for most G20 countries.
The report puts forward three main conclusions:

• The efficiency with which energy is transformed, distributed and used is likely to improve, even in the absence of targeted policies to promote energy efficiency. However, introducing such targeted policies could unlock much larger energy savings and associated benefits across economic, social and environmental agendas.
• Monitoring the nature and extent of the benefits associated with energy efficiency programmes spurs the development of new programmes and helps improve their design. At present, most benefits, even the most politically-appealing ones, such as employment creation, are often not quantified.
• Energy efficiency programme design should place additional emphasis on targeted information provision and capacity-building activities, as they are essential for overcoming barriers to energy efficiency. Such activities are often not prioritised and as a result lack the sufficient human and financial resources, which are indispensable to ensure that the programmes deliver their full potential.

The report is based on four technical reports, all available from UNEP DTU Partnership. Non-technical summaries of these reports are also available.

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Assessing the missed benefits of countries’ national contributions

New Climate Foundation. Study for the Climate Action Network (CAN)

This report first provides an overview of the general co-benefits that climate action may have and how they could be used to incentivise further ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. We then provide illustrative results for the cobenefits achieved by the INDCs of the U.S., China, the EU, Canada, Japan, India, South Africa and Chile, as well as an indication of the forgone or missed benefits that could have been achieved through action that leads to 100% renewable energy in 2050.

Making all the benefits of multifamily retrofits count

Rachel Cluett, ACEEE blog post

Energy efficiency retrofits for multifamily buildings offer a host of benefits beyond energy savings to building owners and tenants. The problem is that efficiency programs that spur investment in this kind of work are not always assessed fairly. In our new report, Multiple Benefits of Multifamily Energy Efficiency for Cost-Effectiveness Screening, we describe the wide range of benefits resulting from multifamily efficiency retrofits and provide solutions for how to establish their value and include them in regulatory testing, for fairer assessment of multifamily efficiency programs by regulators. [Read full ACEEE blog post]

Full study: Multiple Benefits of Multifamily Energy Efficiency for Cost-Effectiveness Screening

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Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Discussion Paper 2015-77, September 2015
Authors: Ian Parry, Chandara Veung, Dirk Heine

Abstract
This paper calculates, for the top twenty emitting countries, how much pricing of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is in their own national interests due to domestic co-benefits (leaving aside the global climate benefits). On average, nationally efficient prices are substantial, $57.5 per ton of CO2 (for year 2010), reflecting primarily health co-benefits from reduced air pollution at coal plants and, in some cases, reductions in automobile externalities (net of fuel taxes/subsidies). Pricing co-benefits reduces CO2 emissions from the top twenty emitters by 13.5 percent (a 10.8 percent reduction in global emissions). However, co-benefits vary dramatically across countries (e.g., with population exposure to pollution) and differentiated pricing of CO2 emissions therefore yields higher net benefits (by 23 percent) than uniform pricing. Importantly, the efficiency case for pricing carbon’s co-benefits hinges critically on (i) weak prospects for internalizing other externalities through other pricing instruments and (ii) productive use of carbon pricing revenues.

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eceee Press Release – European energy and climate policies are partly based on questionable assumptions, resulting in short-sighted assessments that under-value the economic benefits of energy efficiency, a new study shows. The findings by the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy suggest that higher targets for energy efficiency in the European energy and climate policies could be more than justified. Most EU Member States use more realistic assumptions in their efficiency assessments.

Days ahead of a hearing in the European Parliament, the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (eceee) reveals that there is a clear economic justification for higher energy efficiency investments in Europe than originally anticipated by the European Commission. In the study Evaluating Our Future, authored by Ecofys, eceee demonstrates that EU Member States often apply lower interest rates to evaluate energy efficiency investments than the Commission’s own calculations suggest.

“The report reveals that the Commission in its impact assessments applies many times higher discount rates than individual Member States are doing in their own policy evaluation work” says lead author Dr Andreas Hermelink of Ecofys. “For households this figure is 17.5%, whereas most Member States use figures in the range of 3 to 6%.”

The high discount rates used in the studies for the Commission’s impact assessments had previously been identified as a major reason for this under-valuation of efficiency.

“The EU could have proposed a much more ambitious efficiency target if it had used lower discount rates. This reality-check suggests that Member States are ahead of the Commission when it comes to assessing the benefits of energy efficiency investments. In light of this, the EU should consider increasing its efficiency target”, said Nils Borg, Executive Director at eceee.

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The COMBI project has reviewed the state of research on the quantification and monetisation of multiple impacts of energy efficiency improvement (EEI) actions. This will be the basis for further methodology development within the COMBI project, now the next steps to do. All review reports are online in the Downloads section.

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A detailed description of the end-use energy efficiency improvement actions for which the multiple impacts in the EU will be analysed (PDF) and second the literature review on multiple impact quantification methodologies (PDF).

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The first big steps to take will be the definition of energy efficiency improvement actions that form the basis of all further work and detailed reviews of the existing research on the quantification of multiple benefits of energy efficiency. This website will keep you informed both on project proceedings and other relevant studies on the topic from third parties.

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