3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
feasible to encourage such a transition. 370 In short, a significant portion of the billions of euros
already spent each year for energy consumption can be used in other ways to more
productively strengthen the country’s larger economy – provided local business leaders and
local policy makers choose to encourage these smarter and more productive investments.
This contribution to the master plan explores future economic development opportunities
available to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. More specifically, the analysis examines the
prospective economic returns within the Luxembourg economy if households and businesses
were to shift away from current investment patterns to pursue a more productive and cleaner
energy future. The analysis investigates the benefits that energy efficiency and renewable
energy resources can deliver to the regional economy as the basis for a revitalized economic
development. It also examines the scale of investment that will be necessary to drive those
improvements. Lastly, the report details how a shift in spending toward clean energy could
strengthen the nation’s ability to support more incomes and jobs.
With this in mind, the next section of this assessment provides the overall framework that
reinforces the analysis found here. A subsequent section then describes the current patterns of
economic activity and energy consumption, and explores the scale of purposeful effort and
investments that will enable Luxembourg to build up future opportunities. The last major
section includes an overview of the methodology used to estimate the net job gains and other
economic impacts brought on by the greater diversity in the use of energy resources and, in
particular, the greater level of renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements. It then
summarizes the major economic impacts of this specific inquiry and highlights the next three
critical steps that can ensure a more robust, resilient, and sustainable economy within the
country. The first step includes an immediate implementation of “first energy efficiency
projects” to document the scale of positive outcomes that will emerge from these first
ventures. The second step is to lay out a set of useful metrics that can assist in the evaluation of
the benefits which follow from these and future projects. The last effort, logically building on
the two previous steps, is to develop a policy-relevant database that can both track the major
projects and policy initiatives and inform the nation about all of the net positive outcomes
370 In a very thoughtful interview, San Diego Gas & Electric Senior Vice-President of Power Supply, James Avery
highlighted emerging problems associated with the rapid adoption of photovoltaic energy systems. He noted: we
haven’t begun “to think of the technologies that will evolve” out of the digitalization of the grid. He said, the
“wealth of opportunities far exceeds the programs and applications that exist today.” See,
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/sdge-if-youre-not-prepared-for-the-change-its-too-late/366979/. For the Grand
Duchy of Luxembourg, these opportunities include both domestically-produced resources as well as cost-effective
imported energy services that depend on an array of renewable energy technologies.
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