A policy-oriented digest of factors underpinning sustainability projects: matching demand and supply needs to successfully drive the deployment of energy-saving investments

Energy-efficiency projects influence the welfare of people.Although financially feasible, there is vibrant debate on why such investments often struggle to be implemented. Mainstream literature suggests that financial elements define investment decisions, however scholars have showed that many non-financial factors matter. Based on an empirical analysis, this paper tries to capture factors that match both demand and supply requirements. In an effort to provide concrete information, this paper finds major paths to support decisions. The identified factors are: regulatory stability since investments in energy efficiency projects may require long time-periods, standardization in terms of the availability, implementation and practise of an acknowledged set of standards, transaction costs that investment procedures, data accessibility and standards decrease the perceived complexity of investments and in so doing make them simpler to implement, finance and to ease their transaction costs, measurement, reporting & verification and quality assurance, Regulation and certification of energy performance. The mentioned factors emerged to be critical for both demand and supply of projects that coincide with the public sector, the private sector, the industry and consumers. This paper findings shed some light on elements that define the energy-efficiency gap, a topic that has gained a wide interest among government and civil society