Policy impact known in advance

45 manufacturing energy consumption. Furthermore, most of the relatively simple measures had already been taken under the first agreement. 25 The effects of the Benchmarking Agreement, the successor to the first multiyear agreement for energy intensive industries, were virtually wiped out on the introduction of the European CO 2 emissions trading system in 2005. Participants in the system no longer needed to prepare energy efficiency plans and the goal of ranking among the best in the world for energy efficient process installations by 2011 was abandoned Verificatiebureau Benchmarking, 2004; 2006. The Benchmarking Agreement has since been terminated. Its successor is the Multiyear Energy Efficiency Agreement for ETS companies MEE Agreement, 26 which came into effect in October 2009. The effects of this agreement are not yet known. Environmental Management Act The Environmental Management Act has had a limited influence on energy savings. Pursuant to the Act, licensed companies have had to use energy efficient techniques since 1993 if they had the financial resources to do so. Municipalities and provinces are responsible for implementing the Act. A study of the Acts implementation found that municipalities and provinces did not give priority to energy savings when granting licences and, moreover, the regulations on licence issuers were difficult to implement De Buck et al., 2007; Haskoning, 2009; Majoor De Buck, 2010. Tax schemes and grants Tax schemes and grants have had an impact in the manufacturing sector Davidson et al., 2011. It has been largely restrained, however, by the large number of free riders, companies that use a scheme but would have invested in energy savings anyway. 27 We consider the impact of government policy on the manufacturing sector in more detail in chapter 5 of this part. 25 The actual effects of the second multiyear agreement cannot be quantified precisely. Owing to differences in definitions, it cannot be said whether participants were more energy efficient than non-participants. 26 ETS: emisisons trading system. 27 There are reasons not to use the term free riders as it usually refers to those who benefit from a scheme but contribute little if anything. The term deadweight loss, the loss of economic efficiency due to unnecessarily high prices or costs, might be more appropriate. We use the term free riders here as it is frequently used in evaluations of grants e.g. Aalbers et al., 2007; IBO, 2001. 46

3.4.2 Built environment

The built environment sector comprises a large and heterogeneous group of energy consumers. Individually, their consumption is limited and there is little incentive to save energy: households, the trade and service sector and the public sector. An evaluation found that compulsory elements in the policy had the most effect. Energy tax produced the greatest energy saving. Consumer response to the change in energy prices is limited but since energy tax is the only instrument that affects all households it produces a high saving Joosen et al., 2004. The combination of grants and European minimum efficiency standards for domestic appliances and products was so successful in the period 1995-2002 that most white goods are now energy efficient A label Joosen et al., 2004. A third compulsory instrument is the minimum energy performance standard for buildings. The Energy Performance Coefficient EPC was first adopted in the Building Decree in 1995 and has since been tightened up on several occasions. In consequence, new houses and office buildings are designed considerably more energy efficiently that before 1995 Joosen et al., 2004. Nearly all Dutch grant schemes for the built environment ended in about 2002. The European Commission did not increase the number of appliances subject to energy efficiency standards until 2005. The introduction of the standards made slow progress. The Clean and Efficient working programme proposed options for more compulsory policy in the built environment. An example is the requirement introduced in 2008 that when a house or other building is sold the owner must provide the buyer or tenant with an energy efficiency label. At present, energy efficiency labels do not play a significant role in the housing market. In 2008, just 10 of house sellers provided new owners with an energy label VROM CBS, 2010. The More with Less Agreement introduced for the built environment in 2008 was expected to make a significant contribution to energy saving. It has since become clear, however, that it will produce far fewer savings than the government had estimated. The target was to save 100 PJ but the maximum feasible saving is 44 PJ Daniëls et al., 2010, p. 52.