SPEEDIER – SME Program for Energy Efficiency through Delivery and implementation of EneRgy Audits

On June 18 and 19, SPEEDIER, a European project within the H2020 framework, officially kicked off. This 2.5-years project aims to address the barriers faced by Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that prevent them from undertaking energy audits and implementing the recommended energy-saving measures. SMEs account for 12% of global energy consumption, but often struggle to implement simple energy saving measures due to a lack of in-house knowledge, expertise and resources.

To address these issues, SPEEDIER (acronym for SME Program for Energy Efficiency through Delivery and implementation of EneRgy Audits), will provide a self-financing outsourced energy management service to SMEs. By outsourcing the role of energy manager to specially trained SPEEDIER Experts, SMEs will be able to access the expertise they need whenever they need it, leading to higher uptake of energy audits and greater implementation of energy efficiency measures.

To achieve these aims, SPEEDIER will target groups of SMEs in 4 EU pilot regions: in Spain, the project will engage with SMEs based at a single business park to demonstrate the advantages of clustering SMEs to give them better access to the economies of large scale projects; in Ireland and Romania, SPEEDIER will address SMEs in the manufacturing and hospitality sectors respectively; and in Italy, a more general approach of accessing SMEs from any sector via ESCOs will be tested.

SPEEDIER is a highly innovative one-stop-shop solution that applies an integrated approach to energy management, providing information, advice, capacity building, energy auditing, financing, implementation of energy efficiency solutions and monitoring of impacts.

SPEEDIER is expected to contribute European energy efficiency targets by saving approximately 8 GWh/year of primary energy, and 1,280 tCO2/year. Within the lifetime of the project, SPEEDIER will train more than 650 staff at SMEs across a range of sectors in the best practices of energy efficiency. The project will build capacity for ongoing roll out around Europe by training 50 SPEEDIER experts to deliver the SPEEDIER Service.

The consortium delivering this project is led by the IERC and consists of 6 Research and Technology Centers (Limerick Institute of Technology, Fundación Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía, Parque Científico y Tecnológico Cartuja, Politécnico de Milano and Institut de Tecnología de la Construcción de Catalunya), 3 SMEs (TFC Research & Innovation Limited, Sustainable Innovations and Vertech Group), and 1 Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) –Asociatia Agentia pentru Efficienta Energetica si Proteclia Mediuliu.