Improvement of the operation of Energy Conservation evaluation system : Preferential treatment of subsidies for S class and expansion of utilization of site survey results for B class

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy will improve the operation of the “Business Operator Classification Evaluation System” (SABC Evaluation System) that divides business operators into four stages according to the degree of energy conservation efforts. We will make full use of the results of the field survey conducted for the business operators with low evaluation score and proceed with the finding of the factors causing stagnation. After the Great East Japan Earthquake (March 2011), while energy conservation of business operators is in a steady state, we aim to further deepen the policy by more prominent countermeasures.

This system is to classify the business operatorsin to four stages, S (energy saving is excellent), A (general), B (stagnation) and C (requires attention), based on the average annual energy intensity for 5 years reported by periodical reports submitted to the government every year by business operators. This classification system is used for implementation of the regulations and the support to the business operators.

In the classification based on the periodical report of 2017 (average energy intensity of five years (2012 to 2016 fiscal year)), the S class was the most frequent, 56.7% (6469). However, it has decreased by 5.9 points compared with the report in FY 2015, and further improvement is difficult afterthe considerable progress in energy saving triggered by the earthquake disaster in 2011.

Based on these trends, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry provides S-class operators withthe preferential treatment such as additional points at the time of adoption examination of energy-saving subsidies as well as publication on the current METI website. The business operators that have been able to continue the S-class evaluation are reckoned asthe target of the “Energy Saving Promotion Taxation” which was newly established in FY 2018and is the measure such as special depreciation when introducing specific energy-saving equipment, are able to reduce submission frequency a medium- to long-term plan, etc. C class is requested to implement energy conservation diagnosis.

In the future, the scope of the field surveys implemented mainly for the B class companies will be expanded and through the improvement of analysis and evaluationof the resultsthe stagnation factors will be extracted. On the contrary, the good practices of business operators which raised from B class to S class are organized and shared among business operators. Regarding A-class business operators, which account for about 30% of the total, METI has not taken any special measures at the present time, but intends to take new measures such as strengthening information dissemination.