Events, News & Podcasts

The role of multiple benefits in the European green transition: The multiple benefits of energy efficiency and the catalytic potential of their consideration for the European green transition.

During MICAT’s first formal session of the 2022 eceee Summer study, Wuppertal Institute’s Chun Xia-Bauer presented the extended abstract ‘Beyond Energy Savings – Quantifying the Multiple Impacts of Energy Efficiency Improvements‘ while Florin Vondung explained the architecture of the energy poverty alleviation indicator of the soon to be released MICATool.

Three cities – Calvià, Vitoria-Gasteiz, and Tartu – were selected by the MICAT project team as MICATool Pilot Cities to co-develop and validate the tool to be developed by the project. The MICATool is intended to help the cities by supporting decision-makers to gain better insights into energy policy impacts, making monitoring and reporting on energy efficiency measures and policy impacts more comprehensive and accessible to a wider audience, demonstrating and communicating the multiple benefits of energy efficiency, and last but not least assessing the economic benefits of energy efficiency measures.

The first city workshop with the piloting city Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) took place to discuss the possibilities of embedding the MICATool into local policy, alongside MICAT partners and tool developers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Wuppertal Institute as well as IIASA.

MICAT was presented as a part of the Innovative Solutions to finance energy efficiency and renewables track together with the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency project.

The WHY project, MICAT’s related project, hosted an event at EU Green Week on improving energy demand modelling to forecast the domestic sector’s energy consumption.

The Multiple Impacts Calculation Tool (MICAT) Project aims to develop a comprehensive approach to estimate Multiple Impacts of Energy Efficiency by co-creating a free, easy-to-use, scientifically sound online tool (MICATool).

Niklas Mischkowski, an Officer with ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, explains how ICLEI is facilitating the MICATool’s co-creation process with three pilot cities in the project.

Dr. Fabian Wagner, a Senior Research Scholar and Dean for Capacity Development and Academic Training (CDAT) at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) explains the expertise on environmental issues – especially air pollution and greenhouse gases – that IIASA brings to the MICAT project.

Calvià, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Tartu were selected to be MICATool Pilot Cities in order to help co-develop and test a new online tool that estimates the multiple benefits of energy efficiency such as emissions reduction, improved health, better air quality or new employment opportunities, and helps leaders make more informed decisions about energy-efficiency policies and investments.