Publication: Power More with Less: Scaling Up Energy Efficiency for Growth and Energy Security
Loading...
Date
2025-06-04
ISSN
Published
2025-06-04
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This approach paper advocates for energy efficiency (EE) to be prioritized and scaled up—necessitating its elevation in energy sector policies, targets and programs, for both low- and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs). It draws on the lessons learned through the World Bank Group’s (WBG’s) EE engagements since 2010 and offers guiding parameters for policymakers, development partners, and the private sector to use in scaling up demand-side EE globally in end-use sectors including public facilities, households, and industry—and the role the WBG can play to enable this.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2025. Power More with Less: Scaling Up Energy Efficiency for Growth and Energy Security. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43292 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Western Balkans : Scaling Up Energy Efficiency in Buildings(Washington, DC, 2014-06)Within the six countries of the Western Balkans, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, energy efficiency (EE) is increasingly seen as a key pillar in national energy strategies, helping to enhance energy security, contribute to economic growth, and ensure environmental sustainability. This is for several reasons. EE can reduce the region's heavy reliance on expensive imports, enhance competitiveness and job creation, and reduce the impact of widespread fossil fuel use. EE can also bring important social benefits, helping to improve local air quality (mitigating related adverse health impacts), improve indoor comfort levels through improved heating, and make energy more affordable for low-income families. Finally, EE is seen as a critical tool in helping to mitigate the effects of necessary and planned tariff reforms by offsetting the higher energy costs to the entire economy. To realize these benefits, the Western Balkans countries will have to shift from broad policies and small-scale pilots to scaled-up financing and implementation. There is an urgent need to develop viable financing models in all sectors, as well as suitable delivery mechanisms, information systems, and necessary secondary legislation, in order to meet national targets and fuel economic development in a more sustainable manner. Buildings, which account for almost half of energy use in the regions, have been identified as a key sector in all of the country EE plans.Publication Financing Energy Efficiency Measures for Residential Building Stock : Scaling Up Energy Efficiency in Buildings in the Western Balkans(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-05)Within the Western Balkans region, a secure energy supply is critical to sustaining economic growth. Currently, the region relies heavily on imported hydrocarbons and maintains high energy intensity relative to Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. This places a huge burden on companies, which require affordable and reliable infrastructure services to be competitive; the public sector, which spends significant budgetary resources on energy; and households, which have to pay a high portion of their income for energy services. As energy pricing is further rationalized, a higher burden will be placed on all sectors, especially poorer households. The residential sector is a significant energy consumer. Its share of total final energy consumption ranges from 28 percent to 32 percent (compared with the EU average of 27 percent). Fairly simple renovations such as insulation, heating system upgrades, and improvements to windows and lighting could reduce consumption in this sector by some 9 percent, with payback periods generally less than 8 years. Such improvements could help ease the impact of future tariff increases while helping reduce the region's projected energy supply and demand gap.Publication Energy Efficiency for Sustainable Development : Scale Up Strategy and Action Plan(Washington, DC, 2005-12)This study describes the Energy Efficiency for Sustainable Development (EEfSD) action plan, to scale up energy efficiency operations in client countries. The EEfSD strategy comprises of interventions at three levels: policy and regulatory, sector and sub-sector, and at end-use equipment and appliances. It is structured along four tracks: integrating energy efficiency within economic and sector work; mainstreaming energy efficiency in investment operations; improving internal operational, learning and analytic capacity; and monitoring, evaluation, and outreach. Priority focus is on countries with highest energy intensities, where rapid growth of the energy sector is expected and where total energy use is greatest. Implementation of the action plan will be guided by the Energy, Transport and Water Department, and will require cooperation and collaboration across the Bank Group, in particular the regional operations units. This paper presents the estimated incremental costs for FY07-09 which have been committed from energy trust funds and Bank budget.Publication The Energy Efficiency Investment Forum : Scaling Up Financing in the Developing World(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-10)The document contains the proceedings of the Energy Investment Forum conference, The Forum was held to discuss option and explore opportunities for improving access to investment capital and financing for energy efficiency in developing countries. The Forum was held New York City, New York, as a side event to the 14th meeting of the Commission of Sustainable Developments as one of its core themes. Over the two-day session, participants were able to preset and debate the state of the global energy efficiency market and to explore its relevance in the broader global energy debate. Topics addressed included : energy efficiency issues and opportunities; country experiences in promoting energy efficiency; market-based approaches for utility, building and industry sectors; financing energy efficiency; innovative financial structures; and mobilizing local capita markets. The key outcome of the Forum was a call for significant scale-up of energy efficiency investment in the developing world. Recognize that a kW (Kilowatt) save is cheaper, cleaner and more immediate than a kW generated, Forum participants called upon stakeholders to support an aggressive global campaign to increase the use of energy efficient products and practices.Publication Energy Services Market Development : Scaling Up Energy Efficiency in Buildings in the Western Balkans(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-05-01)The development of private sector energy service providers (ESPs), including energy service companies (ESCOs), that specialize in energy efficiency (EE) project development and implementation can help overcome some of the important barriers to scaling up implementation of energy efficiency (EE) projects, particularly in the public sector. ESPs can offer a range of services spanning the energy services value chain and provide the technical skills and resources needed to identify and implement EE opportunities, perform services using performance based contracts (thereby reducing the risks to the energy users), facilitate access to financing from commercial lenders, and enable the energy users to pay for the services from the cost savings achieved. This guidance note provides examples of actions taken by governments in many countries (such as Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, and India) to foster the energy services market and help establish and grow ESPs in their countries. Experience from these countries shows that governments need to adopt a three-pronged approach, involving policy and regulatory initiatives, technical assistance (TA), and financing strategies, to build ESP and public agency capacity, implement ESP projects in the public sector, and provide the platform for moving to more complex implementation and financing models in the future. TA or financing alone does not offer an effective strategy to overcome the multidimensional challenges of ESP market development; efforts in all three areas are needed. Key conclusions of this guidance note are that: (i) there is no specific formula that can be prescribed to instruct governments on how to develop energy services markets; and (ii) fostering the ESP market requires governments to undertake a concerted set of legislative, regulatory, policy, financing, and awareness and information initiatives.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-10)The global economy is facing another substantial headwind, emanating largely from an increase in trade tensions and heightened global policy uncertainty. For emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), the ability to boost job creation and reduce extreme poverty has declined. Key downside risks include a further escalation of trade barriers and continued policy uncertainty. These challenges are exacerbated by subdued foreign direct investment into EMDEs. Global cooperation is needed to restore a more stable international trade environment and scale up support for vulnerable countries grappling with conflict, debt burdens, and climate change. Domestic policy action is also critical to contain inflation risks and strengthen fiscal resilience. To accelerate job creation and long-term growth, structural reforms must focus on raising institutional quality, attracting private investment, and strengthening human capital and labor markets. Countries in fragile and conflict situations face daunting development challenges that will require tailored domestic policy reforms and well-coordinated multilateral support.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication Women, Business and the Law 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-04)Women, Business and the Law 2024 is the 10th in a series of annual studies measuring the enabling conditions that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. To present a more complete picture of the global environment that enables women’s socioeconomic participation, this year Women, Business and the Law introduces two new indicators—Safety and Childcare—and presents findings on the implementation gap between laws (de jure) and how they function in practice (de facto). This study presents three indexes: (1) legal frameworks, (2) supportive frameworks (policies, institutions, services, data, budget, and access to justice), and (3) expert opinions on women’s rights in practice in the areas measured. The study’s 10 indicators—Safety, Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Childcare, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension—are structured around the different stages of a woman’s working life. Findings from this new research can inform policy discussions to ensure women’s full and equal participation in the economy. The indicators build evidence of the critical relationship between legal gender equality and women’s employment and entrepreneurship. Data in Women, Business and the Law 2024 are current as of October 1, 2023.