This database provides harmonised energy savings potentials for each EU Member State, for Croatia, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, for industry, transport, households and services.

It also indicates the main drivers used to estimate these potentials and present the trends in some energy efficiency indicators that are associated to the different potentials.

The objective of this data base is to provide the Commission with a tool to assess national EEAPs and to help identifying the sectors where the national savings targets established under the ESP Directive can be met most cost effectively.

The analysis of the potentials relies mainly on the MURE simulation tool (Measures d'Utilisation Rationnelle de l'Énergie), which has a rich description of end-use technologies in order to describe the impact of the penetration of energy efficient technologies at a detailed level.

Three potentials are assessed: low economic potential, high economic potential and a technical potential.

The energy efficiency potentials calculated in this website as well as the detailed project report are based on a scenario approach which underlies the calculations. The activity drivers underlying this scenario approach have been derived mainly from European Energy and Transport Trends to 2030 (Update 2005). This document was chosen as the basis for our work because it contained the most recent EU-wide projections available by the time. During the validation of the results of this potential study with a variety of EU Member States it was noted that some of the drivers in the EU projections deviate quite considerably from drivers used at the national level. The choice of the drivers naturally impacts on the energy efficiency potentials: in fact the larger a given driver, the larger the related energy efficiency potential. The authors do not necessarily view in the same way all the development of the drivers used at the EU level. However, in order to keep this document harmonised with the EU projections, we relied on the drivers as provided. In future efforts these differences need to be investigated further to improve the precision of the work presented here.

The project was co-ordinated by the Fraunhofer-Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany). Project partners are: ENERDATA (Grenoble, France), Institute of Studies for the Integration of Systems ISIS (Rome, Italy), Technical University (Vienna, Austria), Wuppertal Institute WI (Wuppertal, Germany).

The full report and summary version of the study "Energy Savings Potentials in EU Member States, Candidate Countries and EEA Countries" can be downloaded using the links below:

• Full report [4 MB]
• Short version [136 KB]