What are the economic benefits of implementing your energy audit?
It has been more than nine years since Royal Decree 56/2016 was published, which partially transposed Directive 2012/27/EU, regarding energy efficiency. Specifically, the aforementioned Royal Decree transposed what refers to energy audits, obliging large companies to carry them out within a period of nine months from its publication and with the obligation to repeat them every four years from the date of the previous energy audit, under the risk of being sanctioned for non-compliance with said schedule.
This obligation forced many companies since then to carry out an energy audit, but in many occasions it became a mere formality, a formality, obtaining a report that went directly to its file without any benefit for the company, which was not the objective of the European Parliament when it developed the aforementioned Directive.
Why is it important to perform an energy audit?
The energy audit is a detailed tool that allows to identify the energy consumption of a facility, its operation, the energy distribution between process and auxiliary facilities, to determine where there are inefficiencies and to propose a series of improvements to perform the same function in an energy efficient way, and consequently, at a lower cost.
The problem is that until the appearance of the well-known Energy Saving Certificates, companies did not prioritize investments in energy efficiency, focusing mainly on productive investments.
Therefore, we had one more obligation for large companies, an additional cost, and improvement measures that did not have the quick profitability that large companies admit in order to authorize an investment, which was not productive.
Energy Saving Certificates (ESCs): the new incentive for energy efficiency
This situation has now been turned around and following the publication of Royal Decree 36/2023, of January 24, which establishes a system of Energy Savings Certificates (ESCs) The energy savings are monetized, no longer for large companies, but for all companies and individuals, which «turns the tables», and it is in the interest of companies to carry out an in-depth diagnosis and look for possible energy improvements in their facilities, because the more savings can be identified, the greater the economic benefit will be obtained and the more profitable and viable it will be to carry out this investment.
The system of CAEs starts in Spain in 2023, although its awareness by all those affected is becoming more relevant since the end of 2024 and this first quarter of 2025 and continues to grow.
This system puts the known Obligated Entity (SO hereinafter), which has an annual obligation to make an economic contribution to the National Energy Efficiency Fund, based on the previous year’s energy sales, in contact with the companies that can carry out energy efficiency actions, so that alternatively to making these contributions to the Fund, it can purchase the energy savings for an amount that can range between approximately 100 and 160 €/MWh, depending on the volume of energy to be sold to the SO and the time at which the sale is made.
How energy auditing can generate economic benefits
Therefore, we are in a new business where finding energy savings is a priority for companies, as it allows to undertake investments that without this support would not have the proper profitability and short return, finding actions that even allow to obtain higher income than the cost of investment to undertake them. The key to boost energy efficiency has been found, being now the Energy Audit more important than ever, moreover, the more detailed it is done and the more time is spent on it, the more opportunities we will have to bring out energy saving opportunities.
It is also possible to go further with the installation of energy consumer monitoring to discover the precise consumption of each equipment or installation, and going one step further, to implement an Energy Management System, which allows the involvement of the entire company, continuous monitoring and the detection of opportunities to improve the efficiency of the installation as well as the rapid amortization of the investments to be made. Facilities are improved, processes are optimized and a contribution is made to the European Union’s Energy Savings targets, the target for Spain for the period 2021-2030 being 53,593 ktoe.
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