ALBERT

Description: A case study in the rural area of South Westphalia, Germany, showed the importance of independent intermediaries to support the development and implementation of sustainable energy and efficiency projects. The idea behind the project "Dorf ist Energie(klug)" (Village is Energy(smart)) was to foster, accompany, and support energy and efficiency projects in villages from the first idea to final implementation. Therefore, the South Westphalia Agency as independent intermediary initiated an application process in which villages could apply with their innovative energy and efficiency project ideas. During the following process the chosen "coaching villages" benefitted from the consultation of teams of thematic experts. Villages with less developed projects were supported through idea workshops with experts and study visits. The accompanying scientific study evaluated the overall process focussing on the transferability, the sustainability and the quality of the process. Furthermore, a self evaluation tool for (energy) projects in villages was developed and tested in two of the participating coaching villages. The paper gives a short insight into the project "Dorf ist Energie(klug)". It presents the methodology of the accompanying study and the results with a special focus on the role of the South Westphalia Agency as independent intermediary. Finally, it discusses the transferability and sustainability of the project.

Description: Energy efficiency of a range of domestic appliances covered by the labelling and ecodesign directives has improved significantly over the last 15 years. However, the power consumption of the German residential sector has remained relatively constant over this period. Besides other factors, such as decreasing average household size, the main reasons for this development were the increases of the types, features, size, equipment stock and usage times of appliances and devices in private households. The project "Energy Sufficiency - strategies and instruments for a technical, systemic and cultural transformation towards sustainable restriction of energy demand in the field of construction and everyday life" investigates how the complementation of energy efficiency with energy sufficiency could lead to more user adequate domestic products and product-service systems and thereby result in an absolute reduction of power consumption. In this project, energy sufficiency is defined as a strategy to reduce energy consumption by three approaches: 1. Quantitative reduction of sizes, features, usage times of devices etc. 2. Substitution of technical equipment in households by e.g.urban services. 3. Adjustment of technical services delivered by appliances toutility needed and desired by users. The energy saving effects of an application of these approaches were modelled for different types of households and the energy saving potentials of energy sufficiency quantified. Innovative approaches for user adequate products and services were developed in open innovation workshops by the Design Thinking method. The paper summarizes some of the intermediate results of theoretical and transdisciplinary investigations of the project that runs until May 31, 2016. Furthermore, a first set of design criteria for user adequate appliances enabling energy sufficiency are developed based on these results. The paper concludes with suggestions for the future development of energy labelling and ecodesign derived from the design criteria and supplemented by examples of existing requirements according to the voluntary environmental label "Blauer Engel".

Description: In the last four decades, energy efficiency increased significantly in OECD countries. However, only during the most recent years, total energy consumption started to decrease a little, and much more slowly than energy efficiency potentials would suggest. Energy sufficiency has therefore gained new attention as a way to limit and reduce total energy consumption of a household or a country overall. The project "Energiesuffizienz" funded by the German ministry for research has examined what energy sufficiency actually is, and what householders, household members but also manufacturers and local authorities could do to make electricity use in the home more sufficient. The focus of this paper is the policy part of the project - the first comprehensive analysis of an energy sufficiency policy. The objective is to find out how policy can support market actors in using the energy sufficiency options identified. As for energy efficiency policy, it starts with the gathering of potential sufficiency actions and the analysis of the relevant barriers all market actors face, to derive recommendations for which policy instruments need to be combined to an effective policy package, and which other pre-conditions have to be met. Energy efficiency and energy sufficiency should not be seen as opposed to each other but work in the same direction - saving energy. Therefore, some instruments of the energy sufficiency policy package may be the same as for energy efficiency - such as energy taxation, and linear or progressive energy prices. Some may simply adapt technology-specific energy efficiency policy instruments. Examples are progressive appliance efficiency standards, standards based on absolute consumption, or providing energy advice. However, sufficiency may also require radical new approaches particularly to mitigate the drivers of non-sufficiency. They may range from promotion of completely different services for food and clothes cleaning, to instruments for limiting average dwelling floor area per person, or to a cap-and-trade system for the total electricity sales of a supplier to its customers, instead of an energy efficiency obligation. The paper presents these and other elements of an integrated energy sufficiency policy package resulting from this analysis.

Description: The overall objective of the web-based consumer information tool Euro-Topten is to promote the market transformation towards energy efficient products. Euro-Topten informs consumers about the most energy efficient products in various categories and thereby aims to directly influence the purchasing decisions of individuals or professional buyers. Providers of internet-based information tools are confronted with the problem, that there is no bidirectional interaction with the users. Hence, it is difficult to evaluate if the specific needs of users are addressed, if and how the user processes this information and to what extent the information influences the user's decision making process. To study these questions, a web-based survey was conducted in two consecutive rounds. In the first round the survey focused on the assessment of the information tool itself and the motivation for using the Euro-Topten websites. This survey was online on all active Euro-Topten partner websites from October to December 2012. In total, 1791 users completed the survey. In the second round, a subset of the survey population was queried again. 1,043 participants agreed to take part in a more comprehensive follow up survey, 383 completed the second survey between May and July 2013. The second survey concentrated on the question how Euro-Topten has influenced the purchasing behaviour of the survey participants. This gave significant insights on how the information on the Euro-Topten websites has affected purchasing decisions of the surveyed users. Based on a comparison of performance indicators of the most efficient products recommended on the Euro-Topten websites with performance indicators of a base case product available on the market, avoided energy demand could be estimated for those users, who bought products from the Euro-Topten list. Based on these results, two impacts of Euro-Topten could be estimated: The influence of Euro-Topten on purchasing decision of users and the associated reductions in energy demand and CO2-emissions.

Description: After a wave of privatizations in the end of the 1990s, the electrical power supply of many municipalities in Germany has been returned into public hands. Many municipalities discover chances and possibilities for local action, which arise with remunicipalisation. The local policy-makers realize that remunicipalisation offers the opportunity of implementing an independent energy policy at local level which is critical in creating a transformation to a sustainable energy system based on energy efficiency and renewable energies. The municipal ownership allows a strong governance towards more political influence in the local energy market. In addition, there is a clear opinion of the population: 81 % of citizens surveyed say they trust their local municipal utility, compared to only 26 % who say they trust corporations (VKU-Survey, 2010). In summary, there are many good reasons for local politicians to establish their own municipal utilities. The payback for municipalities is tangible when the local utility focuses on reliably providing affordable energy rather than on increasing its returns. The new municipal power utilities stimulate competition and contribute to the renewal / restructuring of the traditional energy market. The founding of 72 municipal utilities since 2005 leads us to ask for the reasons. The study reviews the German trend towards municipal ownership of local utilities, assessing their performance based on 10 targets related to the energy transition, climate protection, and the local economic impact: 1. Achieving environmental objectives and organization of the local "Energiewende". 2. Higher local added value. 3. Harnessing tax regulations for improving municipal services. 4. Improving the income situation of the city. 5. Democratization of supply and stronger orientation towards the common good (public value). 6. Creating and protecting good jobs. 7. Acting in social responsibility in energy supply. 8. Expansion of eco-efficient energy services. 9. Harnessing customer relations and public image. 10. Materialising synergies with other sectors. Based on expert opinions, the study finds out that the likelihood of these targets being reached is "high to very high". The aim of this article is to provide a compact and basic understanding of the possible reasons for the phenomenon of remunicipalisation.

Description: This paper draws upon an extensive transdisciplinary scenario development in the context of the stakeholder oriented preparation of the climate protection plan of the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia, which is home to the most important heavy industry cluster in Europe. In that context we developed differentiated bottom up climate change mitigation strategies and scenarios for the major energy intensive industries aluminium, iron and steel, cement, lime, paper and steam cracker for olefin production together with representatives of industry as well as society.