On the 26th of February, EFIEES answered to the Commission’s public consultation on assessing EU & national funding for energy efficiency.
At EU level, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), are, among others, frequently used by EFIEES’ members for their energy efficiency projects. At national level, there is a great diversity of public fundings for energy efficiency across Europe. Based on its members’ feedback, EFIEES draws the following two general conclusions when assessing public funding for energy efficiency in the EU.
⭐ Public funding for energy efficiency should focus more on guaranteed savings overtime: energy efficiency is key to EU carbon neutrality by 2050, but barriers exist in accessing public funds for energy efficiency projects such as those including Energy Performance Contracting (EnPC). Such energy management solutions are indeed often in competition with single-action initiatives, clients will rather turn to a single-action solution under a public funding, focused on equipment or works on the envelop of the building, than to an EnPC project with multiple actions and benefits, combining equipment, works and services. In these cases, public subsidies fail to finance the projects with the highest and longer-term energy savings.
⭐ Public funding for energy efficiency should be more predictable and simpler to access: Even though decisive for most of energy efficiency projects in some EU countries, public funding for energy efficiency sometimes seem quite difficult to access, to use, or to identify, and are also perceived as volatile. Longer-term fundings, coupled with simplification would guarantee a better predictability and mitigate markets distortions.