Leveraging Energy Efficiency Investments: An Innovative Web-based Benchmarking Tool

Energy Efficiency (EE) plays a key role in decreasing energy consumption at a European level, while it is considered as one of the most cost-efficient means to achieve carbon reduction and reinforce energy sufficiency and security. EE financing is imperative to implement measures that will lead to achieving the desired carbon neutrality and, thus, avert climate change. The majority of EE investments ideas are abandoned during the first stages of investment generation as there is not enough interest by the involved actors to support the maturing of the idea. The present paper aims to boost EE investments by developing a web-based Tool that evaluates project ideas, connecting them with real financing proposals. All the above are being realised through standardised procedures, establishing a concrete typology of five (5) EE sectors, a well-structured risk assessment methodology of five (5) risk categories and (9) risk factors, and a benchmarking procedure that takes into account four (4) broadly used economic criteria and eleven (11) verified sustainability indicators. All the parameters are calculated using the candidate project data and EU official statistics, formulated into four (4) main criteria that are fed into a MultiCriteria Decision Analysis that performs the project’s benchmarking. The presented methodology is being practically tested through the development of three (3) innovative Tools (Assess, Agree, Assign) and a stakeholder consultation process with around 200 participants. The Tools filter and benchmark candidate project ideas, based on the standardised benchmarking and the EU Taxonomy sustainability principles, while connecting the most promising project ideas with state-of-the-art financing methods, such as the Green Loans, the Green Bonds and the Energy Efficiency Auctions. By this token, the developed Tools provenly provide added value to the respective stakeholders, offering standardisation in EE project benchmarking and financing, building trust between investors and projects developers