Energy efficiency and sustainability assessment of about 500 small and medium-sized enterprises in Central Europe region

Diego Viesi, Francesca Pozzar, Alessandro Federici, Luigi Crema and Md Shahriar Mahbub

Energy Policy, 2017, vol. 105, issue C, 363-374

Abstract: Nowadays more than 20 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are located in the European Union (EU): they are a key driver for economic growth, innovation, employment and social integration. The first step towards better industrial energy and environmental performance is the acknowledgement of the savings potential that can be realized by the company ownership and management board. Following this goal, the CEEM (Central Environmental and Energy Management) project provided to about 500 Central Europe SMEs of 5 countries (Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia) a user friendly and free of charge web tool called 3EMT (Eco Energy Efficiency Management Tool). Through a questionnaire the 3EMT analyzes and sums up eco-energy patterns, helps to self-assess the company environmental performance, benchmarks a company with other Central Europe’s enterprises, delivers a customized Assessment Report, suggests further services and facilities. In this paper, the large 3EMT database is analyzed, and statistics focused on SMEs eco-energy performance and future & innovation perspectives are presented and discussed. Furthermore, key challenges and key intervention points were defined by local stakeholders (policy makers, Energy Service Companies, SMEs representatives, researchers), this paper summarizes the main policy outcomes.

Keywords: Small and medium-sized enterprises; Energy efficiency; Energy audit; Industrial policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517301295
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:105:y:2017:i:c:p:363-374

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.02.045

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().