Nov

The coordinator final words: ENSMOV taking stock and looking to the future

With the end of the ENSMOV project approaching, the project coordinator Vlasios Oikonomou – IEECP, summarizes the project key achievements, lessons learned and legacy. He also looks to the future with the follow up ENSMOV Plus project which will start in December and continue the work on article 7 (now 8) based on solid foundations.

The partners of ENSMOV have been working on research, technical assistance and direct implementation of Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive for years. This experience motivated us to evaluate the implementation gaps and try to assist the countries in achieving energy savings and the benefits deriving from the implementation of energy efficiency policies – for the citizens, countries’ budgets, and climate change mitigation.

We used that information to start the development of materials in the form of reports, factsheets, videos, interviews, papers, articles, but even more to organise webinars, workshops, meetings, experience sharing. Answering the needs of participants, the knowledge exchange work included combination of indirect learning and the direct assistance to specific national or sectoral actors.

In this process, we encountered more than 1500 participants in more than 100 events, cooperated with more than 100 experts in different areas, and covered all the countries of the EU, the UK, Norway and the EU – accession countries in South-East Europe. We were supported by the International Energy Agency, DG ENER, Energy Community, Members of the EU Parliament and many market and research experts.

We researched and shared the Article 7 general knowledge, on how to support policy implementation, ensure additionality, be up to date on policy changes or use IT tools. We opened some specific topics on taxation, fuel savings, market mechanisms, but also followed the changes in the sector, working on things that showed up during project implementation, the influences of COVID on policy implementation, and the ever – growing issue of energy poverty and how to tackle it while implementing Article 7. We have helped the countries measure savings, verify and report them to the European Commission trough Monitoring, Reporting and Verification basics, technicalities and details. For the important topic of how to finance all of this and help the countries fund and prioritise the measures, we researched on financial sustainability, cost effectiveness, state aid and shared examples of good national funds set-up.

Member States have testified the benefits they received implementing ENSMOV, with some of the comments like:

A number of national meetings were enriched with ENSMOV inputs.
The assistance from ENSMOV was very pragmatic.
On a daily basis, the Ministry is asking for support…
Multiple actors asked us to organise specific webinars, meetings, educations…
The Ministry has sought the technical support of the consortium for the design and implementation of the Energy Efficiency Obligation Scheme.
Ministry has asked for recommendations and technical support for the new planned policy measure monitoring and verification solutions.
Representatives from the Ministry asked about specific topics related to Art. 7 and what practices in those topics are realised by other Member States.

The last stage of the project, after gathering all this knowledge, experience and information, included the analysis of what is the process and progress of Article 7 implementation in each country, including the successes and good practices, but also the challenges. We developed the key lessons learned and the recommendations on how to implement the policies and what to change with the new changes of the Directive to ensure success and additional benefits.

We are in the place in history when energy security and climate change mitigation in Europe need to go hand – in – hand and effective energy efficiency policies are the only long-term cost-effective and societal – beneficial solution. Therefore, we continue this work with more knowledge, more communication and more concrete, quantified and evaluated policies in our new ENSMOV plus work, funded by the LIFE Programme. All the information from ENSMOV will be available and up to date, and therefore we have started and will continue working on the Article 7, now 8, in our knowledge sharing platform (www.article7eed.eu).

We’d like to thank all national officials (ministries and national energy agencies), energy efficiency experts, obligated parties, market actors or interested citizens joining or listening to recordings of our events. We especially want to thank the experts from all the related fields, the EC and national officials and the sister projects generating with us the content highly needed for the successful implementation of Article 7.

I’d like to thank the partners for the dedicated and professional work on the project and our Project Officer for support and advises.

Vlasis Oikonomou