Too expensive energy savings

This paper presents an evaluation of the Danish heating-audit scheme (HA scheme). The scheme was established in connection with a subsidy scheme to promote energy savings in private households in the period 1978 to 1980. Today, about 5.000 audits are carried out per year. Under the HA scheme, heating consultants carry out heating audits, and recommended measures, based on a cost-effectiveness criteria of a payback period of approximately 10 years, are listed in a report. On average, each audit has resulted in approximately three recommendations per house. Most of the recommendations concern better insulation and change to thermostatically controlled valves for radiators. The recommendations represent a total estimated saving of 20% of heating energy. Three years after the heating audit, 25% of the total number of proposed projects has been fully carried out and 8% partly carried out resulting in energy savings of 6% of heating energy of the 5,000 households. However, the results from the survey indicate that some of the improvements would have been carried out anyway, also if there had been no heating audit. The economic value in general is low, especially from a socioeconomic perspective because the real cost of heating (production cost excluding taxes, but including social costs) is only about half the price paid by the private households. Making the scheme simpler and including only houses with large potentials for energy savings would better the economy of the scheme considerably.