Leon Bremer, Sacha den Nijs, and Henri de Groot recently published a paper on the energy efficiency gap in Energy Economics. In their research they show that firms in the Netherlands can still profitably save about 15% of their energy use by investing in energy efficiency. Even though firms have saved energy in the past, the remaining economically profitable opportunities are still sizable and can make a substantial contribution to fighting climate change and reaching the targets set in the Paris agreement in 2015. The main barrier for firms to invest in energy efficiency identified by the authors is policy uncertainty. This barrier was already identified in earlier research (De Groot et al., 2001), but has become only more relevant since then.
For Leon Bremer and Sacha den Nijs, this is their first publication in an academic journal. They are both supervised by Henri de Groot. Leon is postdoc at the department working on the energy transition and water-related topics. Sacha is PhD candidate at the department working on the regional economic effects of decarbonization, focusing in the required investments in new technologies and labor market effects. Henri is professor in Regional Economic Dynamics, and head of department.