Cost-effectiveness of cohesion policy investments in energy efficiency : Special Report No 21, 2012

The Court assessed whether cohesion policy investments in energy efficiency were cost-effective. The Court concludes that the right conditions in programming and financing had not been set and that the audited projects in public buildings had a long average planned payback period (around 50 years). The Court recommends that the Commission make the cohesion policy funding for energy efficiency measures subject to a proper needs assessment, regular monitoring and the use of comparable performance indicators as well as the use of transparent project selection criteria and standard investment costs per unit of energy to be saved, with a maximum acceptable simple payback period.