A review of industrial energy and climate policies in Japan and Sweden with emphasis towards SMEs

Abstract

The threat of increased global warming resulting from the use of fossil fuels stresses decisionmakers to formulate and adopt policies towards different sectors of the economy. In light of the great earthquake in Japan 2011, energy efficiency also plays an important role in meeting the challenge of power supply shortage. Energy policies towards industry are of particular importance as a major part of the energy in the Economy is used in industrial production. The number of papers investigating and presenting experience from energy end-use policies are scarce. Furthermore, for those present, they often only include a very brief analysis.From a public point of view, evaluations of energy programs are of major importance to measure the performance of the programs. From an energy policy designer point of view, it is of major importance to not only see the cost-effectiveness of the policy but also to understand the fundamental mechanisms for the success or failure of an industrial energy program, in order to learn how to improve future programs.The aim of this paper is to present a review of energy end-use policy instrument in Japan and Sweden towards the industrial sector from 1990-2014, with special emphasize on industrial SMEs.From the results presented some general conclusions can be made, (1) results show that the costeffectiveness differs substantially between the evaluated programs, and (2) that from a governmental point of view, subsidies towards energy audit programs seems like the most cost-effective policy. In addition to this (3) the results from the review also stresses the importance of a clear strategy for every energy program on how the program is going to be evaluated, ex-ante or ex-post, and how the performance of the program is to be measured. This structure should be included from the start of the program.

Changes in Energy Consumption, Economic Growth and Aspirations for Energy Independence: Sectoral Analysis of Uses of Natural Gas in Ukrainian Economy

“…Increasing energy efficiency requires improving of energy audit in both the industrial and household sectors [35], as well as accelerating implementation of energy saving technologies [36]. However, various barriers often arise on the road to such implementation [37].…”

Industrial Energy Management Decision Making for Improved Energy Efficiency—Strategic System Perspectives and Situated Action in Combination

“…The main idea, regardless of the name given to the policy, is a combination of energy assessment/energy auditing and energy management activities. To the authors' knowledge, the oldest VAP that exists today is the Japanese Keidanren [7]. Within the EU a large number of Member States (MS) have launched VAs aimed at their energy-intensive industrial sectors [8].…”

Energy Efficiency as a Wicked Problem

“…As stated by Caffal [35], the 40% improvements that the author outlined were a combination of management approaches and technology improvements. The same holds for energy efficiency policy programs where the most straightforward policy approach is energy audit policy programs, while some countries, such as Japan, Sweden, and Belgium, have had ongoing Voluntary Agreement Programs as major policy approaches toward energy-intensive industry [38]. Thus, there is no true or false means for achieving improvements on technological, process, management, or policy levels.…”