Additional efforts will be needed by European countries to improve the energy efficiency, as with current trends the 20% objective will be missed. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manufacturing sector is a promising field, as SMEs are less energy-efficient than larger enterprises....

The purpose of this study is to determine past and future energy efficiency of fossil power generation in EU-27. It is found that the average efficiency for gas-fired power generation increased sharply from 34% in 1990 to 50% in 2005 and is expected to increase to 54% by 2015 (based on lower...

Barriers exist for improvement of energy efficiency, of which the principal-agent problem is considered an important one. The principal-agent problem is a potential barrier for energy policies based on economic instruments, as the decision maker may be partially insulated from the price signal...