Which digital energy services improve energy efficiency? A multi-criteria investigation with European experts

Energy providers still struggle to decide on which digital energy services can help them stay competitive and aligned with energy efficiency policy targets. This research aims to assist organisations in choosing a service by modelling the selection process along decision criteria via the Analytic Hierarchy Process. This analysis includes evaluations by surveying experts for their opinions and an assessment of objective decision factors such as technical feasibility, business potential, behavioural change and innovativeness. It was found that behavioural and business factors are most important for organisations choosing new services, indicating that there should be a stronger focus on highlighting and assessing these aspects in future research. Additionally, all ICT-based services still ranked closely to each other, demonstrating that it is neither imperative nor easy to identify a single service. It can be concluded that energy providers should adopt a wider approach by offering a digital platform of energy services. Likewise, political adjustments should be enacted in parallel which enable approaches more conducive to organisations for gaining relevant experience. Examples are establishing innovation zones and altering restrictive regulations to facilitate markets to transfer monetary incentives to customers as means to enable new ways how such services can be offered.