Industrial energy: What role for policies?

Industry in the largest energy used sector in the world today. A wide variety of energy efficiency of policies, programmes, products, services and delivery mechanisms have been implemented by countries in efforts to improve energy efficiency in industry. Energy efficiency efforts have been shown to be more likely to succeed if a supportive framework of policies and regulatory environment exists.

During the past decade, liberalization of energy markets, as a process, was initiated in the Australia, Canada, U.K., and U.S., while there is broad experience and history of innovation in industrial energy efficiency policies in developed countries, there remains much potential for further improvement. Moreover, while some developing countries have shown notable improvements in energy efficiency, there is an urgent need for widen diffusion of industrial energy efficiency policies and application of technologies in developing countries.

According to the World Energy Council, energy efficiency has a broader meaning than mere technological efficiency of equipment; it encompasses all changes that result in decreasing the amount of energy used to produce one unit of economic output (e.g. the energy used per unit of GDP) or to achieve a given level of comfort. Energy efficiency is associated with economic efficiency and includes technological, organizational and behavioural changes1. The importance of energy intensity of national economies as an indicator of sustainable development was agreed in Agenda 21, which states that “reducing the amount of energy and materials used per unit in the production of goods and services can contribute both to the alleviation of environmental stress and to greater economic and industrial productivity and competitiveness.”