Explanation of search options

The Policies and Measures database can be searched according to the following nine criteria:

• Country: The country that is implementing the policy or measure.

• Jurisdiction: The level of government at which the policy was formulated or applies. The available choices are municipal, local, national, state/regional and supranational.

• Year: The year in which the policy was implemented.

• Policy Status: The current status of the policy. The user has the choice of ended, in force, planned and superseded (where the policy has been directly replaced by another). In reality, ‘superseded’ will also have ‘ended’. Note that the planned status is rarely used.

• Key Word Search: Terms typed into this field will be searched for across the title of all database records.

• Policy Type: The particular kind of policy instrument planned or implemented.

  • Education and outreach: Policies and measures designed to increase knowledge, awareness, training among relevant stakeholders or users. This can include general information campaigns, targeted training programmes, labelling schemes that provide the user information on a product’s energy usage or emissions.

  • Financial incentives and subsidies: Policies and measures that encourage or stimulate certain activities, behaviours or investments using financial and fiscal instruments. These include feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, rebates for the purchase of energy-efficient appliances, grants, and preferential loans and financing. They also include tax incentives, such as tax exemptions, reductions or credits on the purchase or installation of certain goods and services.

  • Policy processes: Refers to the processes undertaken to develop and implement policies. This generally covers strategic planning documents and strategies that guide policy development. It can also include the creation of specific bodies to further policy aims, making strategic modifications to existing policy, or developing specific programmes.

  • Public investment: Policies and measures guiding investment by public bodies. These include government procurement programmes (e.g. requirement to purchase energy efficient equipment and vehicles, or to source a certain percentage of energy use from renewable sources) and infrastructure investment (e.g. urban planning and transport infrastructure).

  • RD&D: Policies and measures for the government to invest directly in or facilitate investment in technology research, development, demonstration and deployment activities.

  • Regulatory instruments: Covers a wide range of instruments by which a government will oblige actors to undertake specific measures and/or report on specific information. Examples include energy performance standards for appliances, equipment, and buildings; obligations on companies to reduce energy consumption, produce or purchase a certain amount of renewable energy; mandatory energy audits of industrial facilities; requirements to report on greenhouse gas emissions or energy use.

  • Tradable permits: Refers to three kinds of systems – greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading schemes, white certificate systems stemming from energy efficiency or energy savings obligations, and green certificate systems based on obligations to produce or purchase renewable energy-sourced power (generally electricity). In GHG trading schemes, industries must hold permits to cover their GHG emissions; if they emit more than the amount of permits they hold, they must purchase permits to make up the shortfall. If they emit less, they may sell these. White certificate schemes create certificates for a certain quantity of energy saved, for example a MWh; regulated entities must submit enough certificates to show they have met energy saving obligations. Again, if they are short, this must be made-up through measures that reduce energy use, or through purchase of certificates. Green certificates refer to renewable energy certificates which represent the certified generation of one unit of renewable energy, generally one megawatt-hour (MWh). Certificates can be traded and used to meet renewable energy obligations among consumers and/or producers.

  • Voluntary agreement: Refers to measures that are undertaking voluntarily by government agencies or industry bodies, based on a formalised agreement. There are incentives and benefits to undertaking the action, but generally few legal penalties in case of non-compliance. The scope of the action tends to be agreed upon in concert with the relevant actors. These are often agreed to between a government and an industry body, with the latter agreeing to certain measures; for example, reporting information on energy use to the government, being subject to audits, and undertaking measures to reduce energy use.

• Policy/Technology Target: The particular sector or target of the policy instrument. These will vary for the three databases, being more specific in the renewable energy and energy efficiency databases. For climate change, the primary sectoral categories are appliances, buildings, energy production (including renewable energy) industry and transport. In addition, policies can target carbon capture and storage (in industry or power). Some policies can target several sectors at once, for example a programme to reduce household energy consumption could target buildings, appliances and small-scale renewable energy production. This would have a multi-sectoral target. Some policies are broad-ranging strategic plans, which form the basis for specific measures, and are therefore classified as framework policies. Searching by more than one of the seven criteria automatically assumes ‘and’ for the search. Ticking one country and one policy target will show policies that relate both to the country and the selected policy target (even if it is one of a policy’s several targets). For additional information, please contact: pamsdb@iea.org.

See also the glossary