Energy efficiency policies on energy consumption

The purpose of this study by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission is to create a database and develop econometric models aimed at estimating the impact of energy efficiency policies on energy consumption in the EU Member States in the period 1990‐2013.
The novelty of this study’s approach is in the use of MURE’s database on policy measures to produce panel “energy policy indicators” (EPI’s) at the sector level for each European country, possibly aggregated across sectors to produce a country indicator. This indicators are then included, along with usual control variables, in dynamic panel models for each sector and for the whole economy. The estimated models are then used to derive a quantitative measure of the policy induced energy saving from 1990 to 2013, measured as a percentage of the energy consumption as it would have been in the absence of energy policies.
The main results of the study are the following:
Energy policies seems to have an impact in reducing energy consumption. In the absence of energy policies consumption in EU29 countries would have been approximately 11% higher in 2013.
Effectiveness of energy policies seems to be higher in Industry (20% saving in 2013 for EU29) intermediate for Household and Transport (10%), whereas for Services the magnitude and significance of the effect seems negligible.
The evidence on the impact of policies on different sources provided in this study is extremely preliminary: however, there is no clear evidence of a higher impact on some source with respect to others.
The analysis of individual countries has also to be regarded as preliminary: for most countries the ranking based on energy policy induced energy saving seems in line with expectations, while in some cases we have puzzling results.