Following the online workshop “Evaluations of energy efficiency policies: what do they tell us?“, this discussion paper explores the practices and methods applied by different countries to organise the evaluation of their energy efficiency policies.
A review of practice in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and France shows that governments frequently contract external experts to inform policy revisions. The commissioning landscape is decentralised: multiple ministries, regulators and implementing agencies run or commission evaluations within their respective mandates rather than through a single central evaluator.
Across all four countries, evaluation focuses primarily on energy savings and greenhouse-gas reductions, consistent with climate and efficiency objectives. However, wider social, distributional and regional impacts—such as health co-benefits, equity, or place-based effects—are rarely assessed systematically, leaving important value dimensions under-reported.
Data being at the core of impact evaluations, structuring data collection and management over time can be an effective way to provide a robust and updated evidence base, as shown in the UK example with NEED (National Energy Efficiency Data-framework), Ireland’s example with SEAI’s approach to build comprehensive data and methodological resources, and France’s example of the recently started PRODICEE programme (observatory of the white certificates schemes).
Finally, evaluation findings are shaped by methodological choices – which differ between and even within country evaluations. Decisions on baselines, counterfactuals, attribution and measurement approaches materially influence estimated results and cost-effectiveness. Greater transparency and harmonisation of these methods would improve comparability, credibility and the usefulness of evaluations for policy learning and revision.
Further resources on this topic:
ENSMOV Plus webinar on “Evaluations of energy efficiency policies: what do they tell us?”: https://energysavingpolicies.eu/materials/workshop-materials-evaluations-of-energy-efficiency-policies-what-do-they-tell-us/
Website of the EPATEE project: https://epatee.eu/
Proceedings of Energy Evaluation conferences and webinars: https://energy-evaluation.org/resources