EU has little to show from energy scheme: court

The report by the external auditor of the EU comes as the bloc gears up to spend billions of euros overhauling buildings and industries to make them more efficient and to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in its fight against climate change.

A European Commission official defended the programme and questioned the court's methods and its findings.

"The conclusions don't reflect the reality," said the official. "We're going to study the report, but we consider the methodology used to arrive at this conclusion is inaccurate."

The court report said the Commission had not planned the programme properly.

"The distribution of spending over many areas of activities limited the potential to achieve significant and verifiable progress in any particular area," it added.

The European Commission's 3-year Intelligent Energy programme, covering 450 projects, ended in 2006, having helped 1,700 organizations share knowledge and experience.

However the Luxembourg-based court concluded:

"The Commission was not in a position to assess whether local and regional energy agencies made a significant impact, nor to assess whether they improved the coordination of promotion of energy-efficient technology."

"Evaluation reports have not been available in time to influence legislative discussions," it added.

The court recommended that in future the European Commission improves its monitoring of such programmes, makes better use of the feed-back from them and keeps a closer eye on administrative costs, which could amount to a sixth of the total cost.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison, editing by Anthony Barker)