At the beginning of the project, barriers against energy efficiency, energy culture and sustainable supply-chain initiatives were mapped through a review of existing literature, a survey on a group of companies and interviews. The best practices and initiatives enhancing energy efficiency were collected for all participating countries and at EU level. The results were used to create the IMPAWATT platform content material.
The final design of the IMPAWATT online platform, including the format of the capacity building resources, was developed and validated by the project partners. A communication plan was established and the project website launched in November 2018.
Then, the platform’s capacity building material was created. Each partner produced a part of it which was reviewed by another partner and translated in the different national languages: 71 factsheets, 25 presentations and 37 best practice factsheets. For each of the 14 cross-sectorial technologies, data collection sheets, checklists and quizzes were elaborated. A procedure was established to implement the collection, storage, protection, retention and destruction of data, and confirmation that they comply with national and EU legislation.
Regarding the topic on capacity building in energy culture, a survey framework was created to assess the state of energy culture in companies. To understand the companies’ energy behaviour and to provide them with the best set of solutions, a maturity matrix was developed by which the results of the survey can easily be analysed.
The focus of the work on sustainable value chains was to introduce life cycle assessment and life cycle costing methods, and their related standards, tools and databases. Factsheets, presentations and quizzes were elaborated. An easy-to-use tool and database for the comparison of GHG impacts was created to assess the GHG savings thanks to alternative measures that improve energy efficiency and shifting to lower carbon fuels and renewable energy carriers.
The English version of the online platform has been implemented together with a quiz and a survey function. The national portals were created from the English one and the content uploaded and were connected to the interactive Energy Savings Account.
In summer 2019, the national platforms were launched in all 6 countries (France, Germany, Austria, Finland, Italy and Switzerland) and were presented to disseminators and companies. The recruitment went on until the end of 2020.
The IMPAWATT programme was applied to 189 companies. The actions included:
- Partners visited the companies to perform either a small energy audit or to organize a workshop to find, together with the company, new measures. The company received a list of energy efficiency measures, usually together with an estimation of energy/financial savings and of investment costs. Above 105 company sites were concerned by these on-site visits.
- Capacity building Workshops where the company employees were trained on energy efficiency topics,
- Energy behaviour survey,
- Over 70 webinars were organised.
Thanks to the webinars and the other capacity building actions over 1400 employees were trained.
Those actions triggered more than 12 GWh/year of planned energy savings, from which 5 GWh/year are savings from renewable energy production (essentially photovoltaics) resulting in a potential investment of more than 11 million €. At the end of the project, energy savings of 0.5 GWh per year and an investment of 800 000 € were already implemented.
In overall, the online IMPAWATT platform contains over 200 contextualized content elements such as presentations, factsheets, etc., which are translated into French, German, Italian and Finnish for the 6 national IMPAWATT portals. In total more than 325 users registered to the platform including the companies participating in the program.
The webinars and capacity building workshops were successful. Many energy saving measures were identified thanks to the program, but only a part is already implemented. The COVID crisis made the investment decisions more difficult. The validation of the platform with the pilot companies showed that, primarily due to a lack of time, companies did not download and use the platform as much as expected. Nevertheless, the platform content is very useful for auditors and energy specialists who can use it as a resource for their own capacity building actions.
Information and results were disseminated through several different channels, general or national. The exploitation strategy was defined and IPR aspects were agreed by all partners.
Each partner contacted 2-3 entities, mostly public bodies, to ask them if they were interested to continue the exploitation of the platform.
