SPEEDIER was created in response to the European Directive on Energy Efficiency that requires Member States to develop programmes to encourage SMEs to carry out energy audits and to implement recommended energy-saving measures. It is a highly innovative one-stop-shop solution that applies an integrated approach to energy management, providing information, advice, capacity building, energy auditing, financing, implementation of energy efficiency solutions and monitoring of impacts. Furthermore, it aims to break down all the barriers faced by SMEs, making it easy and economically feasible.

As in all projects, SPEEDIER has a number of barriers to overcome:

1. Lack of knowledge within the company
2. Lack of resources (time and money): perception that energy auditing is expensive
3. Lack of control of the building;
4. Lack of willingness of the owners
5. Lack of funding

The SPEEDIER project will address these barriers by providing SMEs with a self-financing subcontracted energy management service; where the funding of these energy audits will come from the future savings provided by the use of the tool.

It will target groups of SMEs in 4 pilot regions of the EU:

• In Spain, the project will engage with SMEs based in a single business park to demonstrate that the advantage of clustering gives them better access to large-scale project economies;
• in Ireland and Romania, SPEEDIER will address SMEs in the manufacturing and hospitality sectors respectively;
• and in Italy, a more general approach to accessing SMEs from any sector through ESCOs will be tested.

The ITeC Foundation is in charge of organizing Work Package 3, where it will be studied: how to characterize SMEs, how to develop a methodology to make energy audits and how to prepare both packages of energy saving measures to be applied, and the database of the future energy tool. This Work Package contained 4 deliverables that have already been developed, approved and published at the beginning of March. Through this link you can consult the deliverables.

On the other hand, ITeC is the leader of the Work Package 4.2 where, everything developed in the WP3 is carried out in the energy tool, a web application that will allow the SPEEDIER experts to enter the data collected in the energy audits on site and provide the client with the saving measures that best fit their needs, providing an assessment of the energy saving, cost and economic return of the proposed measures.

ITeC, along with nine other partners, works hard to build on good practices and break down misconceptions about energy audits. A laborious task that will bring to the world, both energy and CO2 savings, and a number of professionals trained in the field.