The European Court of Auditors published today a special report entitled “Cost-effectiveness of Cohesion Policy Investments in Energy Efficiency”. The purpose of the audit was to assess whether Cohesion Policy investments in energy efficiency were cost-effective. The Court noted that, “Since 2000, the European Union, through its Cohesion Policy funds, spent almost €5 billion for co-financing energy efficiency measures in the Member States.” The ECA concluded that the cohesion policy investments in energy efficiency were not cost-effective. This is another ECA’s report that shows the EU budget wastes millions of taxpayer’s money.
According to ECA “the right conditions in programming and financing had not been set to enable cost-effective energy efficiency investments”. The Court concluded therefore “the audited energy efficiency projects in public buildings were not cost effective.”
The Court found that “the projects selected by Member State authorities for financing did not have rational objectives in terms of cost-effectiveness”.
According to the Court “The cost-effectiveness concept … was not a determining factor when Member States allocated funding to energy efficiency measures and concrete projects.” The Court also pointed out that the cost-effectiveness concept was also not “part of the Commission’s assessment prior to approval of the operational programmes.”
In fact, the Court found that the projects “were not selected for financing on the basis of their potential to produce financial benefits through energy savings, but rather that the buildings were typically regarded as being ‘ready’ for funding if they were in need of refurbishment”. The priority has not been energy efficiency but to refurbish public buildings. Harald Wögerbauer, ECA member responsible for the report, said, “None of the projects we looked at had a needs assessment or even an analysis of the energy savings potential in relation to investments”. In fact, he stressed, “The Member States were essentially using this money to refurbish public buildings while energy efficiency was, at best, a secondary concern.”
The Court also noted that “The planned payback period for the investments was 50 years on average, and up to 150 years in certain cases”, hence “these funds were not spent in a sensible way because the lifetime of the refurbished components or buildings is lower and can, to a large extent, be considered to be lost on the energy efficiency point of view.”
