ACEEE’s 2016 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard has ranked Germany as the frontrunner for energy efficiency, followed by Italy and Japan (tied for second place), France and the UK. Though Germany scored highest for ‘national efforts’, ‘buildings’ and ‘industry’, it was overtaken by India, Italy and Japan in the ‘transport’ category.
“Energy efficiency is often the lowest-cost means of meeting new demand for energy, yet [it] remains massively underutilized globally,” ACEEE director Steven Nadel said, calling on governments to implement supporting policies save citizens money, reduce dependence on energy imports, and reduce pollution. On its Scorecard, the transport, ACEEE evaluated each country using 35 policy and performance metrics spread over the four above-mentioned categories.
Urge for binding US energy savings targets
The United States came #8, yet it rose in ranking from #13 in 2014, boosted by high scores in a number of new metrics added to the report for 2016, as well as improvements in energy intensity, or energy use per dollar of GDP.
However, the report pointed out that the US falls behind most of the EU countries in addition to China and Japan. “The United States still has no binding energy savings goals, unlike Germany, France, Japan, and other countries which have a national energy conservation plan in place. It could take advantage of existing efficiency opportunities by mandating building energy use disclosure polices and categorical labels for appliances,” the report recommends.
Georg Maue, advisor to the German energy ministry pointed out the key role of energy efficiency in the Energiewende policy, which aspires to achieve an almost carbon neutral economy by 2050 at the latest. “We will continue to step up our efforts, as there is a long way to go for us to reach our target of reducing the energy demand by 50% by 2050.”
Commenting on the “silver medal” won by Italy, Mauro Mallone, who heads of the energy efficiency division at the economics ministry, called ACEEE’s rating “a recognition of Italy’s efforts to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.”
EU intensifies efforts in transport, buildings & waste sectors
Commenting on the report, the European Commission called on member states to intensify joint efforts of reducing emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to 2005, notably in the transport, buildings, agriculture, waste, land-use and forestry sectors.
These sectors are not part of the EU Emissions Trading System, but made up almost 60% of total emissions in the past two years. Under the Effort Sharing Regulation, Germany would have to reduce its emissions by a further 38% by the end of that timeframe.
Private investments are started to be aligned with climate and resource-efficiency objectives throughout the block of 28. The European Fund for Strategic Investments is on track to deliver on mobilising at least €315 billion in additional investment in the real economy by mid-2018.