According to the IEA, energy efficiency (EE) was a 500 billion USD market in 2022. Biggest opportunity lies in building and industrial EE. Strong growth estimated for the next decade.

EE goes nicely together with rising energy prices: the higher the price the more you save. Payback periods for EE projects are around 2-5 years. Equipment lifetime is substantially longer (often 20+ years). --> Savings to be had and money to be made right there!

But when you look at the EE growth during the last decade, it was pretty meager. Energy intensity improved only by 1.7% annual rate on average.

How do we speed this up for the upcoming decade?

• Small asset size: EE market is very local and consists of small projects in different locations.

• Many cooks in the project soup: Each project has several suppliers. One project brings together many technologies.

• Many parties in decision making: To make one project happen involves many parties (owner, technology provider, installer, tenants, property manager, financing provider etc).

• Energy efficiency is not sexy & branded: EVs and solar panels are visible and cool. Energy efficiency improvements are hidden in boiler rooms, underground, in control boxes or behind the building facade. --> Less cool and not visible.

• Project finance today is designed for one big, not many small projects: If you are an investor, you can allocate 50MEUR towards a wind park at one go. You need to implement 25 separate building retrofit projects á 2 MEUR to get to same capital allocation.

So how to solve this dilemma:

• Hide the hassle: EE projects need to packaged correctly to make them investable.

• Go digital to enable small size financing: handling of each asset needs to standardised to enable pre-agreed underwriting.

• Make it easy to buy: The customers are keen on buying the solution but do not necessarily want to own it, maintain it and de-risk it. Offer the solution as a service.

• Sell ease of use and reduced risk for end-customer: The provider takes care of the maintenance and execution during the contract period (typically 5-12 years). Customer buys the EE as a service.

• Make it visible: The real stars of EE are the companies behind the solutions. We need to do better in making the solution providers more visible for buyers.