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A DATA ANALYSIS OF A SME ENERGY AUDIT PROGRAM IN GERMANY
Abstract
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) use energy consulting as an important instrument for reducing information deficits when investigating savings potentials and measures for improving enterprises? energy efficiency. Since 2012, Germany has implemented a government support program to help cover the costs of energy consulting for small and medium-sized enterprises that have an energy audit carried out by a qualified consultant. This work examines the results of over 290 companies with energy balances in the period of 2015 to 2017 and provides insights into the types of companies, the energy consumptions; efficiency measures proposed and calculated savings in the audits. The complete audit reports are used as a data basis. The data were acquired from an online tool, which the consultants used to create energy audits. To maintain the data quality, a multi-stage cleansing of the data records was carried out. The result is an evaluation of the recorded figures of all audits, analyzed in numerous different aspects. A comparison with other evaluations of similar funding programs will be used to assess the results obtained.
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References15
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