The current document represents the tasks one of the first Project Result “Energy Footprint management methodology” of the SMEnergy project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme, with the aim of developing a methodology for SMEs to measure their Energy Footprint and identify actions to optimise it and improve their energy use. The work presented here is organised according to the proposal. The project is conducted by a consortium of five partners from four European countries: Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, and Cyprus. All partners have the technical expertise to achieve the project objectives and a wide experience in participating in and managing national and European projects.
The Project Result 1 of the SMEnergy project aims to create a methodological framework for energy footprint management. And the present task (task 1) represents the introduction chapter of that methodology.
This document is a desk research on: energy use/consumption; energy footprint; international standards; energy management; and case studies.
Since SMEs make up over 99% of all businesses and account for approximately 13% of global final energy consumption (Southernwood et al., 2021). Focusing on SMEs, while the environmental impact from an individual company may be low, the overall impact of a sector can be very high considering that the number of enterprises operating in the sector is large. It has been estimated that SMEs account for approximately 64% of the industrial pollution in Europe with the sector variations ranging from 60% to 70%. These figures are in line with SMEs’ contribution to production and employment as SMEs employing almost 70% of the European workforce and producing close to 60% of the overall turnover from manufacturing and services (Calogirou, Constantinos, Sørensen et al., 2010). The contribution of SMEs to the energy efficiency improvement targets of the European Union is significant. Key concepts of the project are briefly defined in the following sections.
References
Southernwood, J. et al. (2021) ‘Energy Efficiency Solutions for Small and Medium-Sized
Enterprises’, p. 19. doi: 10.3390/proceedings2020065019.
Calogirou, Constantinos, Sørensen, S. Y. et al. (2010) SMEs and the environment in the European
Union, European Commission, DG Enterprise and Industry.