Good practice:

ECO Fund – Energy Audits, Energy management system

The subject of the public call, Energy audits is non-repayable financial incentives in the form of "de minimis" aid to SMEs for energy audits of buildings, processes and transport in this company (energy audits), or for the introduction of energy management systems. The purpose of the public call is to encourage the implementation of energy audits in SMEs in order to familiarize them with:
- the existing energy use profile,
- the possibility of introducing targeted energy change,
- identifying and evaluating cost-effective energy saving potentials and the use of modern technologies to improve their energy efficiency,
- to increase employee awareness, SME competitiveness and environmental benefits.
The main stakeholder of this call are SMEs as the one receiving the support. Other stakeholders are chamber of commerce, energy agencies (those executing the energy audits), technological processes experts and other relevant organizations for carrying out the energy audits and having competences of energy audits given in EU standard EN16247-5.
The managing authority of the call is EKO Fund itself.
As this is an ongoing call, it is open till the funds are available. For the upcoming years still 170.000€ from total of 300.000€ are available. In 2017, 9 applications were approved for co-financing (total of 48.328€ was granted), in 2018, 10 applications received co-financing in total amount of 46.063€ and in 2019, 9 application received total co-financing of 35.258€.

Specifically, for the Energy audit call, a total of 300.000EUR was made available from sources as described above. The average cost for an energy audit is around 10.000 EUR and ECO fund contribution is 50%.
A competence of energy audits as given in EU standard EN16247-5 is required.

The call was opened in 2017 and by now 43 % of available sources was used. For the next years more than 170.000EUR is still available. Generally, 10.000 EUR will result in energy savings of 115,6 MWh/year, investment in an easy measure.
In addition to savings on energy bills, lowering energy consumption can help reduce a business’s carbon footprint giving it a more environmentally responsible image in the industry and the community, especially in the future perspective.

Usually, SMEs are unwilling to spend money on energy audits, they don’t have the available funds or they have limited organizational capacities to do so. During the SME POWER exchange of expertise, these were the main reasons for low numbers of energy audits in SMEs.

Energy audits are the basis for deciding on investments in terms of risk, payback and complexity and therefore a detailed cost-benefit analysis is given for each EE and RES measure suggested in energy audit. On the other hand, with Energy audits, SMEs can learn about soft measures for lowering their energy consumption and improving their energy efficiency with low to no investments at all. For example, with simple monitoring of room temperatures, energy savings of up to 6 % can be achieved. Similar with monitoring of room lighting (use of daylight, switch off when room not in use) electricity savings of 3 to 5 % can be achieved. This and similar measures don’t require any investment, but they do return savings in energy and hence carbon. Small investments could be simply changing lightbulb with payback period up to 3 years). So even if the SMEs don’t have the financial capacity, audits could still provide them with a valuable insight into low costs energy reduction.