A country that uses less energy to achieve the same or better results reduces its costs and pollution, creating a stronger, more competitive economy. While energy efficiency has played a role in the economies of developed nations for decades, cost-effective energy efficiency remains a massively underutilized energy resource.

A large-scale, publicly-funded, energy efficiency programme is a four-way win. It’s great for the economy, great for the environment, great for energy security, and great for struggling households.

This interim 2014 report by the Deep Decarbonization Pathway Project (DDPP) summarizes preliminary findings of the pathways developed by the DDPP Country Research Teams with the objective of achieving emission reductions consistent with limiting global warming to less than 2°C.

The Sustainable Energy Association’s Manifesto uses the UK Government’s own online calculator to demonstrate how an ambitious programme of insulating buildings, and producing more energy directly from buildings themselves could net savings to the economy averaging £12.1bn per year from now until 2050.

This report investigates to what extent different definitions of ‘Primary energy factors’ can have implications on EU energy policy. Primary energy factors (PEF) have been developed as a form of comparison and a number of EU directives refer to the implementation of primary energy factors in setting energy and climate targets.