Re-thinking energy efficiency in European policy: Practitioners' use of ‘multiple benefits’ arguments

Highlights

• ‘Multiple benefits’ identifies economic, social and environmental impacts of energy efficiency.

• Leading NGOs and trade associations use this framing to influence EU policy makers.

• Multiple benefits arguments work best linked to values and priorities of policy makers.

• Persuasive case studies as well as quantitative evidence are required.

• A new visualisation of multiple benefits has been developed, which ‘de-centres’ energy efficiency.

Abstract

There is increasing interest in the idea that energy efficiency has economic, environmental and social impacts beyond energy and cost saving - a ‘multiple benefits’ perspective. However, present EU-decision making on energy efficiency is based on assessment of a very narrow range of costs and benefits. This paper investigates whether and how advocates of energy efficiency have used multiple benefits to frame their interactions with policy-makers at EU and UK level, and to broaden the appeal of energy efficiency. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with key practitioners from industry-backed or trade organisations and environment-focussed NGOs. All respondents regularly made use of multiple benefits arguments. Their experience is that these arguments are most persuasive when linked to the values and priorities of decision-makers and politicians, most of whom do not value energy efficiency as a benefit in itself. Different contexts and different benefits are more or less salient for different stakeholders. This framing sets energy efficiency decisions in a broad economic, environmental and social context. As such it requires more evidence than a simple focus on energy savings, and different sorts of evidence which can connect with a variety of decision makers. The importance of recognising differing contexts, actors, values, priorities has led to the development of an alternative visualisation of multiple benefits, which de-centres energy efficiency.

Introduction

Energy efficiency has featured in national and international policy for more than 40 years. The idea that energy efficiency should be an important part of government energy policy developed in response to the first oil price crisis in 1973, when reducing energy demand was seen as a route to greater energy security in many developed countries (Geller et al., 2006). As political and economic priorities have changed, government justifications for continuing to develop policy on energy efficiency have stressed different benefits, including energy security, affordability of energy, business competitiveness, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Mallaburn and Eyre, 2014). Thus, energy efficiency is already understood as a means to reach a variety of ends. Now, the ‘multiple benefits’ framing of energy efficiency seeks to expand the range of benefits which energy efficiency is recognised to deliver, and thereby to increase its role in policy making. This paper presents empirical evidence about whether and how the multiple benefits concept is being used by energy efficiency advocates to influence EU and UK policy makers.

The multiple benefits framing of energy efficiency proposes that energy efficiency has many environmental, social and economic benefits, such as improved health, new job creation, and increased productivity, and that these are not currently properly understood or taken account of in decision-making (IEA, 2014). This approach seeks to expand the perspective of energy efficiency beyond the traditional measures of reduced energy demand and lower greenhouse gas emissions by identifying and measuring its impacts across many different spheres. In their influential report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) brought together a wide range of empirical evidence on the benefits of energy efficiency (IEA, 2014). IEA identified fifteen classes of multiple benefits, represented by a ‘flower’ diagram (Fig. 1). The report focused on bringing together evidence in five key areas - macroeconomic development, public budgets, health and well-being, industrial productivity and energy delivery. This report has been a landmark in establishing multiple benefits as a significant development in thinking about energy efficiency.

In order to examine whether this framing of energy efficiency is likely to influence policy making in the EU and UK, our research uses empirical evidence to look at how the idea is currently being adopted and used. The key research aim is to find out how the multiple benefits framing of energy efficiency is used in advocacy with politicians, civil servants and other decision makers by pro-efficiency non-governmental organisations (NGOs), energy efficiency trade associations and other promoters of energy efficiency. Further, to understand whether and how this framing changes how advocates communicate around energy efficiency, what evidence and arguments they use, what evidence is missing, how multiple benefits arguments play into the political debate, why these arguments might sometimes fail, and what advocates see as the future for multiple benefits thinking.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: first, the paper provides contextual information on the extent to which a multiple benefits framing of energy efficiency is currently embodied within EU policy and a brief literature review (Section 2). Then, empirical interview evidence is used to explore whether and how multiple impacts arguments are being used by advocates to influence policy makers and politicians, and how those arguments are received (Sections 3 Methods, 4 Results). Finally, the results are discussed (Section 5), and conclusions presented (Section 6).