EUROPIA Position on the proposed Directive on Energy Efficiency repealing Directives 2004/8/EC and 2006/32/EC – COM (2011)370

EUROPIA welcomes the EU efforts to encourage energy efficiency in the EU, particularly in end use. The efficient use of energy is vital due to the increasing world energy demand, assessed to grow by 30-40% over the next 20 years. Better energy efficiency will help to conserve resources, to improve international competitiveness, and to reduce the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, EUROPIA strongly believes that there is potential for improvement in energy use by end users and for sectors where energy costs are a small proportion of operating costs; unlike energy intensive industries such as refining, these may not respond to economic or market signals and may need facilitating measures to promote progress. The Energy Efficiency Directive should first focus measures on these sectors, many of which can potentially be done at negative or low cost.