Analysis of the results of national energy audit program in Latvia

Implementation of energy efficiency measures promotes energy consumption reduction, reducing impact on climate, ensuring energy security. A country's energy efficiency potential depends on the existing energy consumption, the overall technical possibilities and previously implemented energy efficiency measures. Availability of qualitative subsector level data is needed to determine country's energy efficiency potential. In Latvia such data in aggregate form have been lacking. Therefore, we collect the data from the mandatory energy audit program initiated in Latvia in 2016, to assess the energy end-use distribution, implemented and potential energy efficiency measures and the energy efficiency potential in industrial companies covered by the audit program. The specific costs of energy efficiency measures are analysed by energy efficiency cost curve method. The results suggest that corrections in implementation and data gathering of the mandatory energy audit program are required to achieve better data quality and wider application of obtained data. Average technical energy efficiency potential for assessed 111 industrial companies that had submitted their audits to the program until October 2019 was 6.35%. However, the true potential could be higher (e.g. for some companies the identified technical potential was up to 40%) if weaknesses in the implementation of the audit program would be corrected. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.