Developing stronger marketing in THERMIE
Under the THERMIE programme, marketing energy technology has been given the highest priority. This is what most notably distinguishes THERMIE from its predecessor, the demonstration programme. As part of the supporting measures for THERMIE, and with the aid of the OPET network (Organizations for the Promotion of Energy Technologies), all appropriate means of promotion and marketing are employed in order to disseminate the technological information and the results of projects so far supported by the Commission and the Member States. Decision makers, operators and market structures in the renewable energies area and in the energy efficiency area, for example, are both disparate and heterogeneous and cannot easily be treated as a sector. DG XVII and the OPET network have had to draw closer to those who take business decisions in the process of disseminating energy technology (users, energy technology suppliers, consumers, financing bodies, etc.). Having already worked together with industrial associations in the new and renewable energies and hydrocarbons sectors, for example, DG XVII intensified and systematized this cooperation in 1992 by creating specific marketing groups. A main aim of these marketing groups is to conduct brain-storming sessions in order to identify more effective marketing tools that are more adapted to the characteristics of the energy technology market. These marketing groups, composed at present of OPET representatives, independent experts and representatives of the industrial associations, should bring about an irrigation process by which relevant information is directed to decision makers involved in the dissemination of energy technologies at the national, regional and local levels in the Community While constituting a new phase in the process of disseminating information under the THERMIE programme, the marketing groups are no more than the igniter or first stage of a chain reaction which has been triggered at European level and which it is desirable to see repeating itself in each Member State. It has already been decided that the supply side of the energy technology market should be associated as quickly as possible with the work of the marketing groups.