The vital role of the target definition in the evaluation of a target

This paper aims to conduct an ex-post evaluation of the EU 2020 primary energy savings target and determine, using decomposition analysis, the contribution of energy savings and efficiency policies toward target achievement. As the savings target has been defined as a 20% reduction relative to the 2020 projection in the reference scenario PRIMES-200, we argue that, for a correct evaluation, one should compare the 2020 projection with the realized energy use in 2020 rather than analyzing the period 2005 (the base year of the target) and 2020.
Our results show that reduced GDP growth (due to the economic recession of 2008-2012 and the COVID19 lockdown) is the main contributor to target achievement. The contribution of intensity and efficiency improvements is surprisingly low, despite the significant number of efficiency policies implemented since 2005. To a large extent, the intensity and efficiency improvements projected in PRIMES-2007, which did not materialize in reality, may explain this.
Our results suggest that using a reference scenario in the definition of a target becomes tricky if the reality of (mainly) economic growth deviates a lot from the projection and/or if the base year of the projection is an outlier. The latter issue may show up when evaluating the new 2030 energy savings target, which has been set relative to the 2030 projection of the PRIMES-2020 with COVID-year 2020 as the base year.