The Horizon 2020 COMBI project aims at quantifying the multiple non-energy benefits of energy efficiency in the EU-28 area. It will gather existing approaches and evidence from the EU area and develop modelling approaches. Finally, it will come up with consolidated data on different impacts of end-use energy efficiency such as:
- emissions (effects on health, ecosystems, crops, built environment)
- resources (biotic/abiotic, metals and non-metals)
- social welfare (disposable income, comfort, health)
- macro economy (labour market, public finance, GDP) and
- the energy system (grid, supply-side, energy security)
In this context, the project will
- refine existing methods and models, and where necessary develop new methods for the quantification and monetisation of selected benefits of energy efficiency improvements in different sectors (residential, commercial, industry, transport), and especially for their synthesis and integration into decision-making frameworks;
- apply these methods in order to derive (ranges of) values for the selected benefits of energy efficiency improvements;
- incorporate multiple benefits into decision-support frameworks for policy-making (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, energy efficiency cost curves or multicriteria analysis) and
- communicate research findings to policy-makers, evaluators and the public through easy-to-use tools, graphs and reports.
The target groups will benefit from project results in four ways:
- An online tool will be developed that helps the quantification of co-impacts for energy-efficiency measures in the particular context of the measure (country, sector, policy).
- An online communication tool will present the results graphically and provide options for the customisation/adaptation of the results to specific needs of the user. The aim is to show net costs of energy efficiency measures (including/excluding the multiple benefits).
- The derived default values of the elasticities and other values to allow an easy estimation of multiple benefits for concrete measures will be published open-access at the website for allowing further investigations of their implications for policy design or evaluation of existing policies by third parties.
- Policy-makers and researchers can include the methods and quantified values in their evaluation models, allowing a more precise assessment of the actual value of energy efficiency improvements, thus informing future decision-making for optimising energy efficiency policies in the horizon to 2030 and beyond.
Project duration: March 2015 – February 2018
Coordinator: WUPPERTAL INSTITUT FUR KLIMA, UMWELT, ENERGIE GMB