Energy savings in enterprises are generally viewed to be effective means to cut GHG emissions. A gap of untapped potentials exists due to diverse challenges and barriers for implementing profitable solutions. Different policy tools have been applied to overcome these barriers including local programmes aiming at facilitating changes among the SME. In this article is analysed the challenges encountered by local SMEs during one such project, the Carbon 20.
The purpose has been to provide the municipal officers with an overview of the character of the various encountered challenges as departure point for discussing, how they can influence enterprises to address them.
In contrast to most of the existing literature, the prime informants are the municipal officers interacting with the companies. The article thereby relies on a “second hand” view of the encountered challenges rather than the enterprises’ own perception. The analysis further adds to the existing literature by relying on explorative investigations rather than surveys on predefined challenges allowing to empirical qualify the character of the challenges.
In the analysis, six overall categorisation of challenges for energy savings by enterprises were establish as well as three supplementing categories to catch statements falling outside these. They were established based on an iterative process including 1) preliminary input during various discussions in the projects two first years and 2) a review of previous literature. These categorise were uses as overall grouping in the processing of the qualitative statements collected during the second and final monitoring processes.
The analyses carried out showed that most of the articulated challenges indeed resemble the learning from the literature review, but also that some challenges are closely linked to the specific local settings and the Danish context.
A “quantification” analyse was made on the overall categorisation that confirmed earlier findings in the literature that “lack of time and priority” is the challenge highlighted the most by SME in a setting, where energy screenings are offered free of charge, and economic challenges as also significant.
Contrary to the literature review, this analysis also showed that challenges related to split incentives between “tenant and landlord” were encountered significantly as the third most. The earlier analysis did however looked only at production companies, which exactly were underrepresented among the companies encountered this challenge during Carbon 20.
The “quantitative” analysis revealed further that some highly debated challenges during the course of the project e.g. “skills to implement highlighted savings“ and
”levy on regenerating of excess heat” were not highlighted specifically for that many enterprises. This points at a gap between the overall perceived challenges and concerns, versus the actual highlighted challenges in respect to the single enterprises.
The closer qualitative analysis of the statements under each of the established categories revealed that the challenges grouped under same overall headlines did concern diverse situations calling for quite different influencing strategies by the municipalities.
Each category was therefore subdivided accordingly resulting in further diversification of the challenges that SME can face in the implementation of energy savings highlighted through energy screenings. This calls for a differentiated and adaptive facilitating strategy by the municipalities or other facilitators. There are for example significant differences in how to approach respective: enterprises already implementing most solutions, but still emphasises that time has constrained them from doing more; versus enterprises basically not interested in the agenda but still point at “lack of time” as the challenge.
Several of the statements pointed out that no challenges had been encountered for the specific companies. Information that most reviewed literature did not address at all.
The overall objective of the analysis has been to highlight the challenges as feedback to the municipalities in respect to improving their facilitation of energy savings. The main findings in terms of policy implications for such local programmes are:
• Time constrains and economic challenges are encountered quite often, why facilitating programmes targeting SME should attempt to address such.
• Similar challenges can take significant different appearance; some may prove to be excuses while others represent a high commitment.
• The challenges are often interlinked in terms of time, economic constrains and other challenges
• As the challenges for the single companies are unique, the actual facilitation of implementation calls for a flexible, differentiated and adaptive approach – not one size fit all.
• For some challenges – e.g. survival and/or no commitment – there may not be any good available voluntary means for municipalities to address these companies
• The split incentives between landlord and tenants are in a Danish context relevant to address especially in relation to smaller non-production enterprises
• Few other contextual challenges were highlighted related to the rules and legislation that pointed at different type of actions.
• In spite of offering the screenings free of charge, challenges related to lack of information and skills to implement the solutions still flourished among the smallest companies.
• These challenges were more related to technical knowledge than skills, including insecurity of whether suggested solutions are suitable. The skills aspect was, however, also partly addressed specifically during the project.
• Almost 20% hadn’t encountered challenges at all. This could be used for further such cooperation e.g. to expose their success stories and/or enlarge their focus on improvements e.g. into product design and development as well as the resource and waste prevention agenda.
In this article, a departure point is given for discussing how the encountered challenges for energy savings provide valuable feedback for the municipal officers in order to adapt their facilitating strategies. It has not been within the scope of this article to discuss, what the municipalities actually can do to address these challenges. This is further analysed in another context (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2015).
Acknowledgements(
The author would like to thank all the interviewees participating in the EU financed project of Carbon 20 (LIFE09 ENV/DK/000366) making this research possible.
Furthermore, thanks go to Carla Smink, Stig Hirsbak and Arne Remmen for valuable comments to the article.
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