Energy service contracting in Slovenia: Comparison of the barriers and drivers for Energy service contracting development in Germany and Slovenia

Abstract: Increased energy efficiency is identified as a key strategy to tackle three energy-relatedchallenges (energy security, climate change and economic development) with low trade-offsand huge win-win opportunities. Energy service contracting represents an instrument of thedemand side energy management that enables cost-effective energy savings. However, theinstrument implementation is many times hindered by the market barriers and failures. InSlovenia, the biggest barriers to its uptake come from the lack of information about theinstrument, lack of trust in providers and unsupportive legislation. Lack of information causeshigh transaction costs to all actors on the market. It can partly be attributed to the poor policymix in Slovenia. The lack of trust in providers is another barrier that is frequently mentionedand a large share of scope for providers’ opportunistic behaviour comes from the limitedcompetition on the market. The most restrictive to the Energy service contracting in thepublic sector, that has been identified as the most promising potential client, is unsupportivelegislation.