Risks and mitigation strategies in energy efficiency financing: A systematic literature review

Abstract

The ever-growing need for boosting energy efficiency implementation towards achieving the targets set at a European level till 2050, has made the upscaling of energy efficiency investments an imperative. This endeavor requires the analysis and evaluation of energy efficiency investments with respect to all the related technical aspects and uncertainty factors. Nonetheless, up to date, despite the existence of a critical body of literature that delves into this field, a significant gap exists as regards the transparent and rigorous study of energy efficiency investment risks from a holistic point of view and the time that are triggered during energy efficiency projects’ life cycle, while stakeholders’ perspective is usually not taken into consideration. In this context, this paper tries to identify the whole spectrum of risks and uncertainties that can arise in energy efficiency financing and to classify them with respect to the project phase that are probably to be triggered. Moreover, it aims to identify the proposed risk mitigation strategies to deal with the risks arisen and reduce their impact. In this effort, the study follows a systematic literature review to synthetize the respective literature, while the view of key players in energy efficiency financing is incorporated into the analysis through relevant projects’ outcomes. Our results indicate that the risks in energy efficiency financing can be classified over eight general categories, with the ones referring to the regulatory framework of the country of implementation and the technical aspects of energy efficiency projects being the most referenced ones.

Keywords

• Investments
• Uncertainties
• Critical review
• Project phases