Macro-economic impacts of energy efficiency in Europe

Copenhagen Economics has been part of the consortium conducting the COMBI project, a large international multi-year project aimed at quantifying the multiple non-energy benefits of energy efficiency in the EU-28 area. The COMBI project was financed by the EU-Horizon 2020 research programme, launched in 2015 and finished in 2018.

The COMBI project consists of five work packages that quantify the impacts of energy efficiency on

Copenhagen Economics was responsible for the work package “Macro-economy”. We analysed and quantified the effects of energy efficiency measures on GDP, employment, and public finances in the short run as well as in the long run.

The starting point for our analysis is a very ambitious energy efficiency programme running until 2030 for EU-28 that includes measures across many sectors including industry, transport, tertiary sectors, and residential buildings. We find that this programme has the potential to boost GDP by 0.5-1.5% in the EU-28 countries in 2030; it depends on where in the business cycle the 28 economies will be in 2030 to which extent this potential boost can actually materialise. We also find that in the long term, fossil fuel prices in the EU are likely to be 1-3% compared to the current policies scenario.

The reports of all work packages can also be downloaded from the COMBI website (see related links). The website moreover contains information on the underlying scenarios and assumptions as well as a tool allowing the user to visualise the results graphically.

The study was commissioned by the European Commission, Horizon 2020.

Download

Author(s)

Related work

Swedish Energy Agency and the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning Multiple benefits of energy renovations of the Swedish building stock
Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) The future of fossil fuels
The Danish Council on Climate Change (Klimarådet) Danish agriculture's emission of greenhouse gases and production
Danfoss, Velux, Grundfos and Rockwool Recommendations for a balanced energy policy