Suchergebnisse

Increased energy efficiency represents a crucial opportunity for European industrial sustainability, but several barriers still need to be tackled, as recent policies have not often succeeded as expected. Thus, it is crucial to understand the existing mismatches between the perception of enterprises, and what the major actors promoting energy efficiency believe enterprises suffer from and need to within the decisionmaking process of investing in energy efficiency. To do so, we have performed an exploratory investigation analyzing a set of Dutch manufacturing enterprises. The study involved other actors, namely the Dutch National Energy agency, the local government, as well as industrial associations to map the views of stakeholders in the decision making cycle. Results show that even a general common understanding of the barriers is disputed, as the interviewees exclusively agree on the primary role of economic barriers. Large mismatches appear when considering how single barriers affect the decisionmaking process and which drivers - and actors promoting them - need to be addressed. Therefore, much greater attention should be paid to such issues, extending policies from industrial final users to all companies supplying enterprises with capital, technologies, services, information, and competences.

Energy management plays an important role in the transformation of industrial energy systems towards improved energy efficiency and increased sustainability. This paper aims to study driving forces for improved energy efficiency in some European energy-intensive foundry industries. The investigation has been conducted as a multiple case study involving 65 foundries located in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. The most relevant perceived driving forces were found to be financially related, followed by organizational driving forces. Nevertheless, some differences can be appreciated according to the firm's size and country. Almost half of the studied foundries lack a long-term energy strategy, about one-fourth stated that they have used Energy Performance Contracting (EPC), and only approximately one in ten foundries have used Third Party Financing (TPF). Among the studied foundries, three out of five have conducted an energy audit. On average, the energy saving potential according to the respondents is stated to be 7.5%. In conclusion, energy management in the European foundry industry, despite increasing energy prices and extensive energy policy actions taken by the EU, still seems to have great improvement potential, calling for future research and policy actions in the field. ; Funding Agencies|European Commission||