Overcoming barriers to investing in energy efficiency

This study looks into barriers to investing in energy efficiency and ways to overcome them. A vast body of research on the topic of energy efficiency investments and barriers that prevent the energy efficiency potential to be fully realized exists. However, it is often the perception of those who work in the field of energy efficiency as a practitioner that may provide additional and valuable insights on the challenges and solutions for overcoming barriers to energy efficiency investments. To obtain this input a survey that looks into various aspects of the problem was developed and widely distributed among energy efficiency experts representing governments, private sector, financial institutions, international and intergovernmental organizations, nonprofit organizations, academia, and independent experts.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Committee on Sustainable Energy and its Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency (GEEE) has been actively engaged in the regulatory and policy dialogue addressing financial, technical and policy barriers to improve energy efficiency. At its third session in October 2016 in Baku, GEEE supported a policy analysis on overcoming barriers to investing in energy efficiency to be conducted jointly with the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency. This study is a result of research undertaken in the framework of the United Nations Sabbatical Programme by Oleg Dzioubinski at the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency in close cooperation with Senior Advisor, Vice Chair of GEEE Tim Farrell, other staff members of the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, other members of the GEEE Bureau, staff members of the UNECE Sustainable Energy Division, and other energy efficiency experts.