Periodic Reporting for period 2 - streamSAVE (Streamlining Energy Savings Calculations)
Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2023-08-31
To deliver a sustainable and long-lasting Energy Union, its pillars need robust grounds and engagement of a great variety of actors. In order to achieve the 2030 targets, the implementation of the energy efficiency pillar such as foreseen in the Energy Efficiency Directive, hereafter EED, especially calls for the full engagement of the public sector at all governance levels, who often act within limited time and resources.
The EED has triggered numerous positive developments within the Member States by setting targets and requirements to incentivize investments in energy efficiency programmes across all sectors. However, the national contributions to the 2030 EU target, as reported in the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), fall short of the ambition currently set. To further increase the level of ambition, requires that most Member States will tap under-used energy savings opportunities.
The streamSAVE, Streamlining Energy Savings Calculations, project has the objective to address this gap by assisting public authorities in streamlining energy savings calculations under Article 3 as well as Article 7 of the EED 2018/2002/EU, which are devoted to energy efficiency targets and national energy efficiency obligation schemes, respectively.
Coordinated by VITO (Flemish Institute of Technological Research), and gathering 12 partners from 10 countries, streamSAVE provides the support needed to increase Member States’ chances of successfully and consistently meeting their energy efficiency targets, by improving bottom-up savings estimations and assessing cost effectiveness of technical energy savings actions. For 36 months, and based on stakeholder needs, streamSAVE targets ten Priority Actions, such as heat recovery and electric vehicles. As a result, transnational knowledge exchange and dialogues between public authorities, technology experts, and market actors took place. At the end of the project, the key stakeholders improved their energy savings calculation skills while the replicability of the streamSAVE results towards all European Member States were ensured. The streamSAVE guidance, its interactive platform and the lively community of experts resulted in a continuous exchanges and progress in increasing energy efficiency policies in Europe.
The EED has triggered numerous positive developments within the Member States by setting targets and requirements to incentivize investments in energy efficiency programmes across all sectors. However, the national contributions to the 2030 EU target, as reported in the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), fall short of the ambition currently set. To further increase the level of ambition, requires that most Member States will tap under-used energy savings opportunities.
The streamSAVE, Streamlining Energy Savings Calculations, project has the objective to address this gap by assisting public authorities in streamlining energy savings calculations under Article 3 as well as Article 7 of the EED 2018/2002/EU, which are devoted to energy efficiency targets and national energy efficiency obligation schemes, respectively.
Coordinated by VITO (Flemish Institute of Technological Research), and gathering 12 partners from 10 countries, streamSAVE provides the support needed to increase Member States’ chances of successfully and consistently meeting their energy efficiency targets, by improving bottom-up savings estimations and assessing cost effectiveness of technical energy savings actions. For 36 months, and based on stakeholder needs, streamSAVE targets ten Priority Actions, such as heat recovery and electric vehicles. As a result, transnational knowledge exchange and dialogues between public authorities, technology experts, and market actors took place. At the end of the project, the key stakeholders improved their energy savings calculation skills while the replicability of the streamSAVE results towards all European Member States were ensured. The streamSAVE guidance, its interactive platform and the lively community of experts resulted in a continuous exchanges and progress in increasing energy efficiency policies in Europe.
At the start of streamSAVE, an extensive stakeholder consultation showed that there are savings potentials that have not been adequately covered by existing bottom-up methodologies. As for other methodologies that are already available, Member States find it difficult to identify the baseline or calculation values for the savings estimations in accordance with the Energy Efficiency Directive 2018/2002/EU (EED). streamSAVE, therefore, identified ten Priority Actions, such as Heat recovery, Building automation and control Systems (BACS), Behavioural changes, and Modal shift for freight transport. For these Priority Actions, standardised calculation methodologies, indicative calculation values including guidelines on Member States’ customisation, cost parameters and related CO2 savings were developed. Public authorities and other stakeholders have easy access to and can practice these new bottom-up calculation methodologies into the platform (https://streamsave.flexx.camp/training).
The sharing of experiences among Member States is facilitated by streamSAVE’s lively community of experts. In total, 20 peer-to-peer dialogues have been organized, in which stakeholders discuss technical and economical details about the Priority Actions. Additionally, the streamSAVE platform and online forum enable the continuous exchange of knowledge. The dialogues were scheduled in close collaboration with the H2020 projects ENSMOV, CA EED, SocialWatt and DEESME. According to the participants’ feedback, the dialogues resulted in a better understanding of key issues and practices related to savings calculations in other EU countries.
In the Capacity Support Facility, the 10 partner Member States received one-to-one technical support which resulted in the real-case application and validation of the bottom-up calculation methodologies and related indicative values. Across the ten Member States, 30 energy efficiency policies are (potentially) improved covering the identified Priority Actions which are characterized by a considerable, unexploitable energy savings potential. In addition, three new Member States - Slovakia, Italy and Cyprus - learned about and practiced the streamSAVE methodologies.
At the end of the project, the streamSAVE community increased to 208 stakeholders who are willing to continuously share experiences and good practices on calculation bottom-up methodologies. Synergies were established with other projects whose duration goes beyond streamSAVE’s end, such as ENSMOV Plus, ODYSSEE-MURE, and CA EED. These outcomes form an important pillar in the continuation of the streamSAVE platform and community of experts after the project duration.
The communication and dissemination efforts allowed to build up a strong and steady presence of the streamSAVE project. With a community of 210 followers on LinkedIn, 425 followers on Twitter, 176 newsletter registrants, and over 50,000 page views on the website in 3 years, it is considered that the streamSAVE online messages reached out to a high number of people. The events successfully engaged the broad energy and climate community too, with significant participation rates, including an average of 111 attendees for industry webinars and more than 100 for two industry workshops. The public availability of the streamSAVE results promotes continuous access, encouraging stakeholders to enhance EED implementation in Europe.
The sharing of experiences among Member States is facilitated by streamSAVE’s lively community of experts. In total, 20 peer-to-peer dialogues have been organized, in which stakeholders discuss technical and economical details about the Priority Actions. Additionally, the streamSAVE platform and online forum enable the continuous exchange of knowledge. The dialogues were scheduled in close collaboration with the H2020 projects ENSMOV, CA EED, SocialWatt and DEESME. According to the participants’ feedback, the dialogues resulted in a better understanding of key issues and practices related to savings calculations in other EU countries.
In the Capacity Support Facility, the 10 partner Member States received one-to-one technical support which resulted in the real-case application and validation of the bottom-up calculation methodologies and related indicative values. Across the ten Member States, 30 energy efficiency policies are (potentially) improved covering the identified Priority Actions which are characterized by a considerable, unexploitable energy savings potential. In addition, three new Member States - Slovakia, Italy and Cyprus - learned about and practiced the streamSAVE methodologies.
At the end of the project, the streamSAVE community increased to 208 stakeholders who are willing to continuously share experiences and good practices on calculation bottom-up methodologies. Synergies were established with other projects whose duration goes beyond streamSAVE’s end, such as ENSMOV Plus, ODYSSEE-MURE, and CA EED. These outcomes form an important pillar in the continuation of the streamSAVE platform and community of experts after the project duration.
The communication and dissemination efforts allowed to build up a strong and steady presence of the streamSAVE project. With a community of 210 followers on LinkedIn, 425 followers on Twitter, 176 newsletter registrants, and over 50,000 page views on the website in 3 years, it is considered that the streamSAVE online messages reached out to a high number of people. The events successfully engaged the broad energy and climate community too, with significant participation rates, including an average of 111 attendees for industry webinars and more than 100 for two industry workshops. The public availability of the streamSAVE results promotes continuous access, encouraging stakeholders to enhance EED implementation in Europe.
To aid Member States to further intensify efforts to deliver energy savings in the short to medium-term 2030, streamSAVE assists Member States in improving energy savings reporting and the implementation of under-used energy savings actions. streamSAVE’s main goal is to expand the policy scope of energy efficiency actions to achieve potential energy savings that were unexploited so far. The savings actions are targeted to those measures with high energy saving potential and considered as priority issues by Member States, the so-called Priority Actions.
To achieve the expected impact in 13 Member States, a number of activities were carried out such as establishing dialogue groups and working groups per Priority Action, and the publication of hands-on guidance displayed on the streamSAVE online platform in a user-friendly manner, delivering a real Knowledge Facility. As a result, more than 40 public officers in the EU-27 increased their skills/capacity on Art. 3 and Art. 7 EED reporting and implementation. But most importantly, streamSAVE helps Member States expanding the scope of their efficiency measures to address new ones, thanks to the focus on ten Priority Actions. During the project, improvements were realized to more than 30 energy efficiency policies related to eight Priority Actions across the ten consortium Member States and three replication countries (SK, IT and CY), leveraging potential new energy savings in these countries. Moreover, the project created a long-lasting experts’ community of 208 stakeholders discussing technical and economical details about Priority Actions improving policy makers’ capacity to implement, monitor and redesign policies to comply with Article 3 and 7 of the 2018/2002/EU EED requirements.
To achieve the expected impact in 13 Member States, a number of activities were carried out such as establishing dialogue groups and working groups per Priority Action, and the publication of hands-on guidance displayed on the streamSAVE online platform in a user-friendly manner, delivering a real Knowledge Facility. As a result, more than 40 public officers in the EU-27 increased their skills/capacity on Art. 3 and Art. 7 EED reporting and implementation. But most importantly, streamSAVE helps Member States expanding the scope of their efficiency measures to address new ones, thanks to the focus on ten Priority Actions. During the project, improvements were realized to more than 30 energy efficiency policies related to eight Priority Actions across the ten consortium Member States and three replication countries (SK, IT and CY), leveraging potential new energy savings in these countries. Moreover, the project created a long-lasting experts’ community of 208 stakeholders discussing technical and economical details about Priority Actions improving policy makers’ capacity to implement, monitor and redesign policies to comply with Article 3 and 7 of the 2018/2002/EU EED requirements.