Abstract
This article discusses ineffective knowledge and information communication as an important barrier to improving energy efficiency in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and considers how to make functional communication an enabler of future SME energy-efficiency programmes. Energy audits – important tools when addressing energy efficiency in companies – are often performed by professionals with an engineering background, which does not reflect the backgrounds of those receiving the audit, inhibiting the interpretation of those audits. SMEs must actively process the information, and their employees must be able to connect the information to existing knowledge.We analysed two methods used by Swedish municipal energy-efficiency programmes to improve energy efficiency in SMEs. The results indicate that in the programme providing SMEs with third-party information, but without any possibility to process the information, the energy-efficiency results were poor, while in the programme in which SMEs were actively engaged in all stages and could discuss problems and results with peers, the energy-efficiency results were better.In implementing SME energy-efficiency programmes, municipalities should avoid simply offering audits. Instead, they should find methods that facilitate knowledge creation among the participants, allowing the participating SMEs to share experience and knowledge with one another and with experts, and to take home ideas, testing them in their own contexts, and communicating their experiences. This would be a way to make communication an enabler rather than a barrier.
Highlights
For the global energy system to implement the Paris Agreement and keep global warming below 2 °C, energy efficiency will have to be one of several important means by which industry reduces its environmental impact (IEA 2019)
We will briefly review the structure of both programmes, focusing on differences in terms of communication and knowledge production
Case 1: an energy-efficiency programme controlled by the municipal administration
Summary
For the global energy system to implement the Paris Agreement and keep global warming below 2 °C, energy efficiency will have to be one of several important means by which industry reduces its environmental impact (IEA 2019). These 60 audits resulted in a report used by the municipal project leader, who assumed the task of analysing how barriers to energy efficiency could be lowered for local SMEs. The SMEs themselves did not participate in the analysis, which was done for them and presented as an investment plan.
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