Energy efficiency and digital transformation

Energy efficiency and digital transformation plays a strategic role in a policy to reach the Kyoto Protocol and the EU 2020 and 2030 targets and it is, at the same time, an exceptional leverage for the Italian economic development.

Using energy efficiently, doing more with less, means releasing resources, both energy and economic ones, of companies, communities, public administration and individuals, to be re-invested in new development opportunities, often, thanks to leading innovative solutions and integrated technologies, also increasing the living and services standards.

An annual average business value of around 5,200 million € has been estimated for the energy efficiency sector in Italy. It is a chain of excellence, composed by firms, service companies, specialized professionals, covering the entire market chain of energy efficiency solutions: from creation to production, from commercial trade to practice; a chain that is more and more highlighting the anti-recession value of this sector, the real growth chances, the competitive and diversifyng elements for our country, the creation of stable and non-relocatable jobs.

The Energy Efficiency and digital transformation Working Group of Kyoto Club, which re-defined, on the 12th of November 2015, its strategic intentions and its action priorities, wants to move in this scenario, promoting, in particular, two macro directions:

The “win – win value” of energy efficiency. With energy saving everybody is a winner: the climate, the environment, the planet’s future; the technological innovation investing in sustainability; the economy of the country, supporting a real development leverage and not a temporary and/or speculative bubble; the final users, who increase comfort by recovering economic resources; the community, which gears down its energies and trains people to enduring, virtuous and sustainable behaviours.
An ecosystem more and more favourable to the energy efficiency, at every level, such as legislation, regulatory one, finance, training, technology, synergetic collaboration between public and private bodies, endorsing and supporting success cases.

Focusing on these two macro directions, the Energy Efficiency and digital transformation Working Group pf Kyoto Club has the intention of specifically pursuing the following 5 targets:

Openness and contribution to the international dimension of the energy efficiency topic, integrated in ambitious climate change and circular and green economy policies.
Circulation of “awareness and knowledge” on energy efficiency, both on public and private levels, even with an ad hoc reference to the “culture of measure”.
Systematic increase of the strategic and operational synergy, with organizations and external bodies having the same vision, with which to build up a network and activate innovative and added-value co-operation plans.
Drive and support an harmonic and integrated normative and regulatory development, with focus on: the completion of all the “post-law number 102” Implementation Decrees; the buildings’ energy performance; the forthcoming new EU legislation on energy efficiency; the relations between energy eficiency and the EU legislation on circular economy; the so long waited Italain Government’s “Green Act”, that, we hope, will represent an effective instrument of the economic policy, able to promote and assure more environment safeguard and sustainability.
Endorsement and dissemination of “Good and replicable practices”.

Considering the importance of the financial leverage for the energy efficiency development, co-operation with the other Kyoto Club Working Groups will be explored, supporting:

The need of a strategy for green investments, that must be clear, coherent and systemic, with energy efficiency becoming a structural element of the Italian industrial policy and not a weak “cyclical experience”;
Financing and bankability of the energy efficiency, the main critical element signalled by the market as primary obstructive factor to the passage from energy audit to concrete improvement interventions. Innovative financial paths start to be developed and tested as, for example, financial leasing programs applied to “certified” efficient technologies; but, even if strongly increasing, there are still too few funding initiatives , based mainly on the project quality and on its performance on energy saving, cost/benefit, payback period, rather than on the exclusive asset evaluation of the involved subjects.

Coordinator

Laura Bruni

l.bruni@kyotoclub.org

Documentation

Working groups list

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