Lessons learnt and continued exchange beyond the EPATEE project

EPATEE (Evaluation Into Practice to Achieve Targets for Energy Efficiency) is an EU funded 30-month project (May 2017 to October 2019) led by a consortium of 10 partners from 8 European countries. The EPATEE project will officially end on the 31th of October and it is now time to draw conclusions about which issues were highlighted by the consortium and which tools were built in order to answer them on a long-term basis. 
 
How to accurately assess the efficiency of a policy?

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 EU Member States. But how effective are these policies in achieving energy savings targets? Several barriers limit policy evaluation and thus hinder target-based adaptions and continuous improvement of energy efficiency policies. 
 
Engaging and activating policy makers and implementers

EPATEE aimed at raising the capacity of policymakers and implementers for policy evaluation by providing them with tools and practical knowledge. This support is based on the analysis of existing evaluation experiences regarding a range of policy instruments, such as energy efficiency obligation schemes, regulations, financial incentives and voluntary agreements. Lessons learnt from these examples provide the basis for the development of guidelines and good practice evaluation tools.   
 
How and what can we learn from the EPATEE tools for ex-post evaluation?

The online Toolbox is the instrument developed by the EPATEE consortium to fulfill its ‘tools and capacity building’ goal. It provides general guidance on ex-post evaluation of energy efficiency policies as well as a knowledge base giving access to relevant and reliable references.  
 
Besides, the platform assists the users in finding references of interest in the form of reports, studies or good practice guides via the Knowledge Base and Case Studies, of General Guidance content via its “Evaluation principle and methods” section and of internal EPATEE Notes (e.g. “Definitions related to Energy savings evaluation”, “Saving calculation methods and their application in the EPATEE Toolbox”, etc.).  
 
Experience sharing about evaluation practices will continue after the end of the project!

The EPATEE project will officially be completed at the end of October 2019. However, the dynamic to develop evaluation practices and related experience sharing does not stop. 
 
The EPATEE website will remain available at least until October 2021. The Knowledge Base and the Online Toolbox will continue to be hosted respectively by Fraunhofer ISI and TNO. A new access to them will also be created as part of the next update of the ODYSSEE-MURE website. This other Horizon 2020 project has already a long history and its website has a large audience, ensuring a renewed visibility for the EPATEE tools and their dissemination. 
 
The webinars will continue to be available on YouTube. Their descriptions and the presentation files have been included in the resources of the Energy Evaluation website. Similarly to ODYSSEE-MURE, this will ensure a renewed visibility for the EPATEE webinars. 
 
The case studies, currently available on the EPATEE website and in the Online Toolbox, should also be soon available on E3P, the European Energy Efficiency Platform, operated by the JRC. In parallel, to ensuring the availability and visibility of the resources developed by EPATEE, another important point to maintain the dynamic is that other projects or initiatives can offer forums to continue the exchanges and discussions initiated along the EPATEE project:

• The Concerted Action EED (CA EED) through its Domain 1 about “Planning, monitoring and verification and savings calculations”
• The ODYSSEE-MURE project that includes a facility about impact evaluations, and organizes workshops and training sessions
• The association Energy Evaluation (formerly IEPPEC), whose activities are focused on promoting the evaluation of energy efficiency policies:  a conference in Europe every two years, a series of webinars jointly organized with Leonardo Energy, a website including the proceedings of the previous conferences and webinars.  

If you are interested in evaluation, the next Energy Evaluation Europe conference will be held in London on 29 June to 1 July 2020. If you are interested in being informed about these activities, you can register to the Energy Evaluation news here. 

The EPATEE project has also highlighted the strong link between evaluation and monitoring. If you are interested in experience sharing about monitoring practices, you can follow the recently started ENSMOV project. 
 

We thank you very much for the interest you have shown along the EPATEE project.

We hope that the projects and initiatives mentioned above will provide you with further resources, and with new opportunities to meet with the experts who were involved in EPATEE!