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Uptake of energy audits recommendations for the energy transition of companies

LIFE Project Grants

Basic Information

Identifier: LIFE-2021-CET-AUDITS
Programme: LIFE Clean Energy Transition
Programme Period: 2021 - 2027
Status: Closed (31094503)
Opening Date: July 13, 2021
Deadline: January 12, 2022
Deadline Model: single-stage
Budget: €4,000,000
Min Grant Amount: –
Max Grant Amount: –
Expected Number of Grants: –
Keywords: LIFE-2021-CET-AUDITSLIFE-2021-CET

Description

Expected Impact:

Proposals are expected to demonstrate the impacts listed below:

Increased rate of transformation of energy audits into concrete measure implementation
Number of companies benefitting from direct support
Number of energy audits carried out within the project
Number of company staff with improved skills/knowledge
Number of energy auditors / other stakeholders with improved skills / knowledge
Contribution to a better implementation of Art. 8 of the EED
Primary energy savings triggered by the project (in GWh/year)
Renewable energy generation triggered by the project (in GWh/year)
Investments in sustainable energy triggered by the project (cumulative, in million Euro)

Objective:

Engaging, supporting and accelerating the transition of EU companies towards a sustainable growth model is one of the ambitious objectives of the European Green Deal. Businesses represented about 74% of the EU’s final energy consumption in 2018^[1], mainly in the transport (31%), industry (26%) and services (14%) sectors. Since individual cases vary significantly - depending on the market sector, energy intensity, importance of energy in the production process, energy mix and prices, exposure to competition, country, size of the company, profitability, etc. – support actions for companies to increase energy efficiency and move to renewable energy sources need to be adapted to these specificities in order to deliver results.

Article 8(1) and Article 8(4) of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) establish the two main obligations for Member States to promote the availability of energy audits and to ensure that large enterprises carry out regular energy audits or have an Energy Management System (EMS) in place. In the last years, energy audits did prove to be a valid instrument to tackle the information gap that is one of the main barriers to energy efficiency, but only a small share of the measures recommended are implemented.

The key objective of this topic is to increase the uptake of such measures in companies using a holistic approach. In fact, several factors can explain why the implementation of audit recommendations remains insufficient, e.g. the unavailability of human resources to work on energy and their lack of knowledge on how to gather energy-related information and introduce new solutions. When considering investments, obstacles include the uncertainty on actual energy savings that will be achieved, long payback times, difficulty to access to finance (internal or external) and limited public incentives. Moreover, the multiple benefits of energy efficiency are often underestimated, especially by smaller and non-energy-intensive companies.

The energy audit process, managed internally or delivered through third parties such as energy auditors, engineers and financial advisors, risks to be fragmented due to the different skills and constraints at each step of the process. This topic aims at enhancing the skills of energy auditors and/or technicians to transform a technical study (boiler room level) into a strategic proposition which can be attractive to the top management (board room level) as well as to improve their know-how to access public incentives and private finance.

Scope:

Proposals should implement tailor-made support activities covering the whole process from energy audit to implementation of measures, and potentially beyond, leading to a significant increase in the rate of concrete implementation of audit recommendations.

Depending on the readiness level of the targeted companies, proposals may deliver operational support directly to companies as a service, or tailored capacity building and advisory to company staff (both at management and operational level), provided that activities lead to the actual implementation of the recommended measures.

Support to companies could include:

Energy scans and detailed energy audits, based on sector-specific benchmarks
Analysis and evaluation of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency (resource efficiency, comfort, health, productivity, staff satisfaction, reputation, etc.)
Formulation of the strategic value for management (risk mitigation, link to company core business and to environmental, social, and corporate governance)
Support in managing the engineering phase
Matchmaking with finance in terms of public grants but also bank loans and potentially private investors

Support to company staff (technical services, top management, financial departments) could include capacity building and advisory, for example on:

Enhancement of corporate culture at all levels towards greener objectives
Change management and re-organisation
Embedding sustainable energy into the corporate communication strategy
Promoting the use of digital solutions, including EMSs based on ISO 50001, in order to achieve higher efficiency, more precision on data of consumption/savings, and better preparation for the uptake of demand/response services

Other activities at the sector / territory level may include the following, provided they are instrumental to the uptake of energy audit recommendations :

Surveys and benchmarking to identify target companies
Aggregation of individual companies / measures to reach a critical size and make them more attractive to Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) and private financiers
Standardisation of processes and documentation from the technical and financial point of view
Capacity building for all actors involved internally and/or externally

Proposals should clearly identify and justify the economic sectors (NACE), size of enterprises and/or territories on which they focus and demonstrate the adequacy of their proposed approach. They should also demonstrate the support and active involvement of key stakeholders, such as professional federations, local and regional authorities, chambers of commerce, etc.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 1.75 million would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Energy_statistics_-_an_overview#Final_energy_consumption

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Eligibility & Conditions

Conditions

Conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in section 5 of the call document

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in section 6 of of the call document

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in section 6 of the call document

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in section 7 of the call document

Submission and evaluation processes: described section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual

Award criteria, scoring and thresholds: described in section 9 of the call document

Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in section 4 of the call document

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in section 10 of the call document

Documents

Call documents:

Call document

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Detailed budget table

Participant information

LIFE General MGA v1.0

LIFE Work Programme 2021-2024

LIFE Regulation 2021/783

EU Financial Regulation 2018/1046

Info session recordings and presentations

Support & Resources

Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – Submission of proposals.

IT Helpdesk – Contact the IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc.

Online Manual – Step-by-step online guide through the Portal processes from proposal preparation and submission to reporting on your on-going project. Valid for all 2021-2027 programmes.

Latest Updates

Last Changed: May 16, 2022

Topic code	Call Topic	Budget (M EUR)
LIFE-2021-CET-LOCAL	Technical support to clean energy transition plans and strategies in municipalities and regions	7
LIFE-2021-CET-POLICY	Towards an effective implementation of key legislation in the field of sustainable energy	6
LIFE-2021-CET-GOV	Multilevel climate and energy dialogue to deliver the energy Governance	5,5
LIFE-2021-CET-BUILDRENO	Large-scale rollout of industrialised deep renovation solutions	6
LIFE-2021-CET-AUDITS	Uptake of energy audits recommendations for the energy transition of companies	5,5
LIFE-2021-CET-VALUECHAIN	Fostering sustainable energy uptake along the whole value chain in industry and services	4
LIFE-2021-CET-BUILDSKILLS	BUILD UP Skills – rebooting the National Platforms and Roadmaps	6
LIFE-2021-CET-COOLING	Facing the increase in cooling demand of buildings in the coming years	4
LIFE-2021-CET-SMARTSERV	Establish innovative business models and contractual schemes for smart and sector-integrating energy services	4
LIFE-2021-CET-SMARTREADY	Creating the conditions for a global improvement of smart readiness of European buildings	6
LIFE-2021-CET-MAINSTREAM	Mainstreaming sustainable energy finance and integrating energy performance in EU sustainable finance criteria and standards	5,5
LIFE-2021-CET-INNOFIN	Innovative financing schemes for sustainable energy investments	5,5
LIFE-2021-CET-HOMERENO	Integrated Home Renovation Services	6
LIFE-2021-CET-HOMERECOM	EU community of "Integrated Home Renovation Services" practitioners	2
LIFE-2021-CET-COALREGIONS	Community-driven clean energy transition in coal, peat and oil-shale regions	3
LIFE-2021-CET-PDA	Disruptive PDA – Technical Assistance to advance market boundaries for sustainable energy investments	6
LIFE-2021-CET-ENERPOV	Addressing building related interventions for vulnerable districts	5,5
LIFE-2021-CET-ENERCOM	Developing support mechanisms for energy communities and other citizen-led initiatives in the field of sustainable energy	7

The results of the evaluation are as follows:

Call LIFE-2021-CET:

Number of proposals submitted (including proposals transferred from or to other calls): 171