Stanislava Gaydazhieva writes on the New Europe website about an EU funded project that Iceland participated in. The project brings many of Europe’s islands together promote energy savings and awareness among households situated on some of Europe’s islands. The project recently held a conference on energy efficient consumer behaviour in European islands.
Icelandic excellence in web energy efficiency calculators
Energy efficiency seems to be a topic of utmost importance for Iceland which took part in the 30-month EU funded project PROMISE together with the Danish island of Samsø, Greek Rhodes and the Spanish Tenerife. The project, which will end in November this year, seeks to promote energy savings and awareness among households situated on some of Europe’s islands.
The awareness raising “Save Energy Now” conference on energy efficient consumer behaviour in European islands, held in Brussels on 16 April, was part of PROMISE and brought together experts in the field of energy efficiency across Europe.
Even though not officially part of the European Union (EU), Iceland clearly has a deep interest in energy efficient consumer behaviour and undoubtedly holds the excellence in developing web-based energy efficiency calculators.
The calculators emerged a couple of years ago, after being created by Sigurður Friðleifsson from the Icelandic Energy Agency. The tool is said to support energy efficient behaviour and decision-making.
In a “personal, interactive and practical” way, the web-based energy efficiency calculators assist consumers in calculating the energy savings obtained through different appliances and installations in homes, such as energy-saving light bulbs and window insulations.
Many claim that that the Icelandic calculators represent an effective tool for influencing consumers’ energy saving behaviour since the actual energy consumption, and thus also the energy saved, becomes evident to the consumer.
The original web calculator analyses the CO2 emissions of different car types. The Icelandic car fleet is very inefficient and contains many large vehicles. This particular calculator becomes very important as the transport sector in Iceland is the only sector in the country that still depends on fossil fuels. The objective of the calculator is to educate consumers about the importance of “right decisions” regarding vehicles, but also reduce the fossil fuel consumption and the CO2 emissions of people by making them choose more efficient vehicles.
The data specific to each vehicle comes from the Road Traffic Directorate. All of the numbers for the technical specifications of the vehicles are European type approvals and are therefore fully comparable.
Another calculator, also available on the website of the Icelandic Energy Agency, represents a vehicle labelling tool, showing in a very clear way the fuel consumption of different cars. To make the outcome even more visible, the car gets an energy label from A-G, like the usual energy labelling of electrical equipment. Furthermore, to help consumers choose their next vehicle with lower emission, the user can type in percentage of the wanted reduction and the tool creates a list of vehicle with lower emission level.
“This calculator is very popular” says Friðleifsson and continues “Even though it has only been running for a year, this site has been visited over 40 thousand times since it was opened”.
The Icelandic Energy Agency representative also announced during the “Save Energy Now” conference that in 2012 around 50 000 people used the web calculators page with approximately 300.000 hits. However, Friðleifsson stressed that the agency has never advertised the page, while pointing out that the only material on it is energy efficiency. He believes that since 50 000 people of Iceland’s 315.000 population was interested in the web calculators, this tool has clearly become popular in the island country.
In addition, he presented also other types of “basic web-based energy efficient calculators”, like the one analysing trip costs and another one- “bike to work” calculator. The first one shows the length, estimated time, fuel consumption, CO2 emission and the cost of the trip (city driving and long distance driving). It has been visited over 25 thousand times since it was opened and it is not limited to Iceland- it can be used for any trip in Europe.
The “bike to work” calculator illustrates how much money and CO2 emission people save by leaving the car at home. To make it even more interesting, a calorie counter was added that tells roughly how many calories can be burned.
An interactive cash flow calculator evaluating investments in renewable energy and energy saving appliances was also presented by Friðleifsson during the conference.
He said that it took him longer time to produce the original calculators, but afterwards it became easier and many more web-based energy efficient calculators were created as part of the PROMISE project or separately.
“I want to transpose my idea also to the public transport”, says Friðleifsson. The idea of translating the calculators in English and other languages, as well as turning them into a “European project” are two options which he also considers. Friðleifsson is convinced that when it comes to energy efficiency, the people do not realise that “small, but continuous steps could bring the necessary change”.
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 