Assessing the potential to overcome economic barriers in the design and implementation of energy-saving technologies

This study’s object is the potential to overcome economic barriers in the design and implementation of energy-saving technologies at enterprises. The task addressed is to devise an effective toolset for assessing this potential. The theoretical foundations for analyzing economic barriers in the design and implementation of energy-saving technologies have been substantiated. A procedure for assessing the potential for overcoming these obstacles was developed. This procedure involves determining the capabilities of enterprises under certain conditions to overcome specified barriers of a subjective and objective nature. In turn, such conditions include enhancing the competence of company personnel and improving the processes of information support for the process that assesses the effectiveness of energy-saving projects, as well as positive changes of an external nature. The designed toolkit was assessed using data from 98 industrial enterprises in the western region of Ukraine. Among other things, it was found that the companies studied have a sufficiently high potential for overcoming economic obstacles that arise when implementing energy-saving technological processes. In particular, the share of energy-saving technology projects that were considered and rejected because of the presence of subjective economic obstacles in the total number of rejected projects varies by industry from 39.29% to 47.54%. The proposed toolkit produces accurate and comprehensive results using a formalized procedure. It could be used by enterprises in various industries to assess the potential for overcoming economic barriers to the design and implementation of energy-saving technologies