Conference article

Swedish companies have since 2003 been able to get certified by an energy management system (EEMS) and companies that have been certified; can now show savings in energy use. The downside of today’s EEMs is that too few small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have chosen to certify such a system in the organization. To increase awareness and interest among SMEs; a simplified version of the EEMS would be desirable. This article presents a simplified EEMs for SMEs developed from the original European standard (SSEN 16 001). The article describes how the simple EEMS was developed and how the system was validated; i.e. how different companies responded to test-runs of the developed simplified EEMS. By testing the simplified EEMS in practice among various SMEs; different needs from the industry have been documented. The requests that were of greatest importance was how different incentives can be designed to increase the certification level; e.g. tax exemptions etc. The Swedish LTA for energy-intensive industries includes tax exemptions; as well as the certification of the European EEMS standard; and has shown to lead to large energy savings. An examples of a future energy policy could thus be a Long-Term Agreement (LTA)s program for SMEs including the simplified EEMS.

Energy management; SME; Industrial energy efficiency; PFE