The EU Directives on energy efficiency such as the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) or the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) trigger a great variety of policies in the EU Member States, but it’s not apriori clear how effective the policies are. That’s why it is important to evaluate implemented policies. Lessons on policy evaluations are:
- Evaluation is not a burden, but an opportunity.
- Evaluation priorities depend on who the primary audience is.
- Evaluation helps increasing stakeholders’ confidence in the schemes.
- Monitoring and data collection are essential for making any evaluation possible.
- Selecting the most relevant data to collect is a continuous process.
- Regular review and in-depth ex-post evaluations are complimentary.
- The choice of evaluation methods depends on evaluation objectives but also practical constraints.
- Comparing different methods helps to assess the robustness of the results.
- Evaluating net impacts is a challenge, but essential to assess the efficiency of policies.
- Good data is well-documented data.
- Communication about evaluation results can be as important as doing the evaluation.
To learn more about policy evaluations and case studies, check the knowledge base of the EPATEE project.