Benchmark system to evaluate the process of energy conservation efforts ― Confirm their efforts by their reports describing the road map, capital investment prospects, etc.
METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry) and ANRE (Agency for Natural Resources and Energy) will accelerate the energy conservation efforts using the benchmark system. They confirm its process by making the business operators describe the road map to achieve the benchmark and capital investment prospects, etc. in the mid-to-long term plan. Even if a business operator cannot achieve the goal, if the effort is recognized, preferential treatment will be given to it in the subsidy screening. The electronic application of the report will also be applied.
On 4th December, ANRE indicated the direction of reviewing the related systems at the “The Working Group on EC Guideline for Factories, etc.” (WG, Chair: Takaharu Kawase, Professor Emeritus at Chiba University) of the Energy Conservation Working Group of the Advisory Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (an advisory body of METI).
In the current system, in case a business operator cannot achieve the benchmark index even if she makes effort for the target, she will not be evaluated and be able to obtain necessary support. To improve this, ANRE request business operators to enhance the description of the mid-to-long term plan for EE&C. Specifically, ANRE requested them to describe the latest energy consumption records, the mid-to-long term prospect for achievement of the benchmark indicators, plan of capital investment and improvement of operations. If the plan includes the effective road map to achieve these indicators, even if the business operator is not classified as the S-Class for the second consecutive year under the business classification evaluation system (SABC evaluation system), the business operator will be qualified as the evaluation target of preferential treatment in the subsidy screening .
For the purpose to monitor the progress, the forms of the periodic reports will be partially revised in order to fill the actual achievement. ANRE will study this to apply it from the FY2021 report. If it is found that the efforts for EE&C are significantly delayed, ANRE plan to focus on implementation of the on-site surveys at the target factories, etc.
ANRE also promotes electronic submission of periodic reports. At present, the electronic submission application rate is about 20%, and it takes much time to convert paper media data into electronic data. For this reason, a new “periodical report web input / application system” has been introduced. It integrates all the processes from report preparation to application and databasing, in order to reduce costs for business operators and the government.
The ANRE and business operators will also expand the use of the data and information containing in the periodic reports. For example, they can analyze the contents and compare themselves with other companies in the same industry, and built-up a feedback system.to easily refer to the advanced cases. The results of the analysis will be published after statistical processing to encourage further energy conservation efforts.