SME Program for Energy Efficiency through Delivery and Implementation of EneRgy Audits

ended

The Energy Efficiency Directive, in its art.8, requires Member States to develop programmes encouraging SMEs to undergo energy audits and implement the recommended energy-saving measures. However uptake of energy audits and implementation of energy conservation measures (ECM) among SMEs has been low to date. The barriers to uptake cited in the literature include lack of in-house expertise; lack of resource (time & money); perception that energy auditing is expensive; inability to act due to lack of control of services in the building they use; lack of willingness from landlords to act; inability to access finance due to the small nature of most projects. The SPEEDIER project will address these barriers by providing a self-financing outsourced energy management service to SMEs. By outsourcing the role of energy manager to SPEEDIER Experts, SMEs can access the expertise needed at the required time, leading to greater uptake of energy audits and implementation of energy efficiency measures. SPEEDIER will target groups of SMEs in 4 EU pilot regions: in Spain we will test a location based approach, engage with SMEs based at a single business park to demonstrate that advantages of clustering SMEs give them better access to the economies of large scale projects; in Ireland and Romania SMEs in the manufacturing and hospitality sectors respectively will be approached to test a sector based approach to service delivery; in Italy, a more general approach of accessing SMEs from any sector via ESCOs will be tested. The project is to be self-financing to remove any financial barriers to energy audit uptake and implementation of ECMs. The mechanism for making this work in practice follows an Energy Performance Contract model where the consultant delivering the support retains a share of the savings as payment for the duration of the contract. This ensures that the Service is also suitable for large enterprises. The project consists of 6 RTDs, 3 SMEs, 1 NGO from 5 Member States