For more than a year, we have been learning more and more about the Energy Saving Certificates system devised by the Ministerio de Transición Ecológica y Reto Demográfico to once and for all boost the energy efficiency sector in the country.

After the approval of RD36/2023 in January this year, we are very close to being able to start buying and selling certificates and see if this new energy savings market works as well as we all hope. The foundations have already been laid and in a few days we will find out what the Delegated Subjects registration and verification company accreditation processes look like.

With the Delegated Subjects defined in the Order that establishes the obligations for 2023, and with a platform that we trust will be operational this year, it seems that we will have everything ready to start the system with all the guarantees: the Obligated Subjects, how can it be otherwise, they are interesting right now in covering their obligations at the lowest possible cost. Companies that want to be Delegated Subjects work on contracts, analyze drafts of documents, contact potential verifiers to find out costs and establish strategies, seek agreements with banks to prepare financing tools that allow them to be competitive and above all look for energy savings.

It is still curious that a market that is positioned around energy efficiency has its weakest point in the achievement of energy savings. Everyone wants to buy them, but who is putting them up for sale? Who offers them on the market more or less massively? The vast majority of society does not know the economic advantages of this new system, and I am not only talking about individuals, but also about large and small companies. Nor does there currently exist any kind of obligation to achieve energy savings by law. Companies implement them voluntarily either because of environmental commitment, because the energy bill has doubled or tripled in recent times or also because of the subsidies that come mainly from Europe. It will be up to us to inform a lot, do a lot of pedagogy and demand legislation that helps or forces us to carry out savings measures in the style of the French Tertiary Decree as a complement to the CAE system.

So it seems clear that the new CAE market needs informed companies that are in contact with the generation of many energy savings: energy service companies, large multinationals, retail companies, engineering specialists in energy efficiency, efficient product companies, administrators of estates and so many others.

I would like to encourage all these companies that channel energy efficiency solutions, either product or service, to position themselves as intermediary companies. They are not second-rate actors in the system. They are the key piece that will guarantee the success of the initiative that is just starting and that, probably due to ignorance, is not valued enough. They will not have to assume the risks of an unstable market price, they will not have to look for financing, just do what they know: promote energy efficiency.

Isabel Tejero is general manager of Bureau Veritas Solutions and coordinator of the CEEC's Energy Saving Certificates working group.