ATENEA4SME: Industrial SME Self-Evaluation of Energy Efficiency ^†

Abstract

Promoting energy efficiency in the Italian production sector is significantly hampered by the lack of knowledge, the scarcity and the limited distribution of tools for supporting energy audits in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a wide range of Italian economic sectors (industry, tertiary sector, transport). The Advanced Tool for ENErgy Audit for SMEs, ATENEA4SME, is intended to help SMEs promote energy-efficiency projects, supports energy audits and self-evaluation of energy consumption. The tool uses an original mathematical model that takes into account the results of questionnaires and a multi-criteria analysis to generate recommendations for energy efficiency investments. This article will give a thorough explanation of the tool, emphasizing and outlining the sections as well as the procedures to get the ultimate summary of the energy usage of the enterprises under investigation and the potential for energy saving. From a technological and financial perspective, the tool helps to remove obstacles to the development of energy-efficiency measures. In this article, the IT and methodological structure of the tool will therefore be extensively described, and its operation for the context of SMEs will be illustrated, with application cases. Ample space will be allocated to the dissemination campaign and the replicability of the tool for all economic sectors of the industrial and tertiary sectors.

1. Introduction

Energy efficiency first is one of the main pillars of the EU strategy for reaching the targets of the energy transition. Stated in the UE Regulation 2018/1999, [1] it is implemented in the current Energy Efficiency Directive (1791/2023) which requires the Member States to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with technical and economic measures [2].

Since 2012, the European Directive on Energy Efficiency n. 27/2012 (now updated and replaced by Directive 1791/2023) has focused its attention on tools and policies aimed at increasing energy efficiency in SMEs. In Italy, Directive n. 27 was implemented in 2014 by Legislative Decree no. 102/2014. Article 8 of Legislative Decree 102/2014 introduced in Italy the obligation of energy audits on production sites for large companies (i.e., all those that are not SMEs) and companies with high energy consumption (registered in the lists of the Cassa per i Servizi Energetici ed Ambientali—CSEA) starting from December 2015 and subsequently every 4 years. From December 2015 onwards, more than 40 thousand energy audits have been collected by ENEA from the onset of mandatory audits for energy intensive companies and all non-SMEs, thus providing ENEA with a large database regarding the energy performance of industrial plants and tertiary sector facilities. This also allowed ENEA to perform several activities in the implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive 27/2012, such as: supporting large companies in drafting energy audits [3,4], evaluating the Energy Performance Improvement Actions (EPIAs) [5,6] and evaluating energy efficiency policies [7] or the energy performances of specific economic sectors [8,9,10].

The recently modified article 8 paragraph 10 of Legislative Decree 102/2014, however, states that ENEA will implement for each of the year from 2021 to 2030, an annual awareness and assistance program for small and medium-sized enterprises (i.e., for all non-obligated entities to the energy diagnosis), for the execution of energy audits at its production sites and for the implementation of the energy efficiency measures proposed. The European Commission report on SMEs highlights for Italy, in 2022, a number of SMEs equal to 3.5 million with over 11 million employees and an added value of 487 billion euros. The potential in terms of energy efficiency is therefore enormous [11,12,13,14] and the aim of the awareness plan is to overcome the barriers that exist for the diffusion of energy efficiency in production sectors involving SMEs. The lack of knowledge and the absence of useful tools for carrying out energy audits in the context of SMEs [15] are in fact among the major obstacles to the diffusion of energy efficiency issues in the Italian production sector (industry, tertiary sector, transport). The barriers that are present today in this sense are of various nature [16]. In the first place stand financial issues, because in the majority of cases, SMEs do not have the economic strength to invest in energy efficiency, nor do they have easy access to credit to carry out interventions with savings that cannot be certified ex ante. Another important aspect is the lack of functional skills devoted to energy efficiency, generally due to a lack of professionalization of the technical staff within SMEs, who pay more attention to the process and production aspects of their activities than to the energy sector. Moreover, equally important is the lack of knowledge of useful tools for companies to facilitate the implementation of energy audits and the implementation of the interventions identified in them. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider the non-purely energy-related business benefits linked to the development of energy efficiency in SMEs, i.e., benefits deriving from an increase in competitiveness, with a possible increase in added value and production and employment volumes, the reduction in energy dependence and the improvement of the company’s image [17]. Finally, the new EED “Directive EU 2023/1791”, focusing on enterprises with an average annual energy consumption exceeding 10 TJ, indicates that information regarding annual volume of water consumption should be included in their annual report.

With this in mind, it is worth stating that ENEA has always been involved in training and information activities with SMEs on the topic of energy efficiency. Over the last 10 years, many agreements have been signed with various regional, national and international entities aimed precisely at spreading the topic among SMEs. Among others, it is important to remember the ENEA—Assolombarda (association of industrialists of Lombardy) agreement for the creation of joint activities on energy efficiency in SMEs, including a tool (called “First Energy check”) to help companies in checking the energy balance of their sites [18].

Equally important is the agreement stipulated between the Alto Adige Energy Agency—CasaClima and ENEA, each within their own sphere of competence, aimed at the activities listed below:

• Initiatives aimed at energy efficiency in SMEs and micro-enterprises and at raising awareness of energy efficiency, whose primary objective is to encourage a structured approach to the introduction of Energy Efficiency Improvement Actions (EMEs) in companies;
• Drafting of guidelines for energy audits in SMEs and organization of activities, events or information material;
• Development, integration and promotion of energy efficiency analysis tools and support for the preparation of energy audits for SMEs [19].

ENEA’s activity has also been present at an international level. From 2020 to 2023, ENEA coordinated the European LEAP4SME project as part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. LEAP4SME project aims to support Member States in establishing or improving effective policies for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to undergo energy audits and implement cost-effective, recommended energy-saving measures by identifying the barriers against unlocking energy efficiency measures, mobilizing private stakeholders, and proposing effective solutions to realize both energy and non-energy benefits. The LEAP4SME project published several deliverables covering a range of topics, including, for example, good practices for implementing energy audits in SMEs, the multiple benefits of energy efficiency measures, and a framework for the development of national SMEs energy audit programmes and schemes. Among these, one particularly relevant in the context of this work is the deliverable dedicated to mapping SMEs in the partner countries, both in economic terms and in relation to their energy consumption, a dimension that requires estimation methodologies since national-level data are often lacking [20]. The representativeness of SMEs in terms of their share of total energy consumption in the industry and services sectors is directly linked to the ability to unlock energy saving potential through instruments such as ATENEA4SME tool.

Within the scope of the project, ENEA promoted the creation of specific guidelines [21] for the implementation of energy audits in SMEs (available in Italian, English, Greek, German, Slovenian and Estonian) and also the creation, in the various member countries that took part with their representatives in the project, of national observatories in which the stakeholders and all those interested discussed how to overcome barriers to energy efficiency in SMEs [22].

Moreover, since 2024, ENEA has been coordinating the Life project LEAPto11 project, developing a joint action of cooperation among ten National Energy Agencies focused on providing support during the transposition and rollout phase of the new Article 11 of EED. The project’s main goal is to contribute to a comprehensive improvement of the quality framework for Energy Audits and Energy Management Systems (EnMS) by evaluating, updating, upgrading, and optimising current national programmes, also those devoted to non-obligated companies.

Relying on the experience built by ENEA over almost 10 years of activities in the support of large companies and energy intensive companies, on the results obtained via the LEAP4SME project and also pushed by the requirements of the new Energy Efficiency Directive, ENEA aimed at providing SMEs with a tool able to unlock their energy efficiency potential. A guided procedure was required allowing for a sector-tailored, simplified energy audit, capable of disclosing cost-effective EPIAs, based on the actual energy consumption of the plant. The tutorial role for SMEs could be put in place by exploiting the knowledge, in terms of effective energy consumption, of the Italian companies lying in the massive database managed by ENEA. ATENEA4SME (Advanced Tool for ENErgy Audit for SMEs) was created in collaboration with the School of Engineering of the University of Basilicata and was developed as a tool to support SMEs in the field of energy efficiency, which helps drafting a simplified energy audit, finding energy efficiency opportunities and analysing the water consumption.

ATENEA4SME was released as a spreadsheet tool in April 2023 and published on the ENEA Audit102 portal, together with a user manual and a permanent questionnaire for the collection of user observations and reports regarding the use of the tool itself. Thanks to the first reports received, ENEA then released updated versions of the tool in August and November 2023, with the aim of continuing to refine the tool over time.

In this paper, we present ATENEA4SME, also providing a comparison with the existing tools found in the literature, by stressing the differences and its peculiar characteristics.

In Section 2, a wide overview of the available tools in scientific literature is presented and discussed, highlighting advantages, limits and drawbacks. The tool is described in Section 3 with a case study. Section 4 highlights its strengths in comparison to the other existing tools. Finally, Section 5 presents some conclusions and perspectives for future works.

2. Comparison with Literature

Table 1 shows examples of existing tools dedicated to supporting computation of energy consumption or carbon emissions in SMEs, carrying out energy audits and/or implementation of EPIAs. The table is structured as follows:

• The first column includes the name of the tool and the link where it can be reached;
• The second column shows the project or institution providing the tool;
• The third column briefly summarizes the tool;
• The fourth column includes the target sector and the company type;
• The last column describes which elements are covered, i.e., energy, environment and economic, and the method employed, if qualitative and quantitative. In particular, the economic feature is related to the assessment and description of the EPIAs.

Table 1. Overview of existing tools, from https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101000132/results (accessed on 30 July 2025).

Name, Link	Project/Institution	Description	Sector and Company Targeted	Elements Covered and Method
Benchmark-Confronto consumi [19]	Agenzia per l’Energia Alto Adige—CasaClima, Austrian Energy Agency and Alperia	The tool provides a comparison with benchmark indicators of similar companies in the same sector. It does not provide recommendations of possible EPIAs to be introduced.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative
Business Carbon Calculator [23]	Normative/SME Climate Hub	The tool estimates full carbon footprint and identifies quick-win actions to reduce emissions.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Environmental/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
Calculator for optimizing electricity consumption in the company [24]	Government of Poland	The tool is an electricity savings calculator, which provides simplified calculations that do not require specialist technical knowledge. It helps SMEs identify the potential for energy savings, as well as estimate the cost of investment related to the replacement and purchase of new, more energy-efficient equipment. The calculator is a first step toward the accomplishment of an energy audit.	Offices, catering and hotel services SMEs	Energy/Qualitative Economic/Qualitative
Energy Footprint Management Self-Rating Tool [25]	SMEnergy project, Energy Footprint Management for SMEs	The tool allows companies in Food and Beverage, Metal and Chemical, and Construction sectors to compute their energy footprint with measurements of total energy consumption per source of energy.	Two industrial sectors and Construction SMEs	Energy/Quantitative
Energy Performance Indicator Tool [26]	US Department of Energy— Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy	The tool can be used to establish a normalised baseline of energy consumption, calculate Energy Performance Indicators, monitor EPIAs implementation and evaluate cost savings and avoided CO2 emissions. Metrics can be assessed for a single facility, multiple facilities within a corporation, or enterprise wide. In this way, corporate energy performance can be calculated.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Environmental/Quantitative Economic/Quantitative
First Energy Check [18]	Assolombarda—ENEA	The software is available for companies registered to Assolombarda, the largest regional association of the enterprise system in Italy. It processes data entered and provides a report describing areas for improvement with an indication of the company position compared to others in the same sector. Comparable benchmarks refer to companies with similar characteristics that populated the tool and they will be updated as long as new companies use the tool.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
ICCEE toolbox [27]	ICCEE project, Improving Cold Chain Energy Efficiency	Among the different available project tools, one is devoted to assessing energy consumption of the SMEs in the cold chains of food and beverage sector (Cold supply chain tool) and another to supporting the undertaking of EPIAs (Life cycle costing tool). To facilitate the adoption of EEMs, non energy benefits are also assessed by a dedicated tool (Benchmarking non-energy benefits). The project approach shifts from the single company perspective to the chain assessment, trying to exploit the associated saving potential and facilitate decision-making.	Cold chain in food sector SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Quantitative Environmental/Qualitative
I-GO Assistant [28]	Green Industry Pl	This resource self-assessment and navigation tool establishes the current resource efficiency status based on actions taken to date, location, business sector and size. No detailed data is needed, given the tool’s output is not a diagnostic review. The tool is related to the SME Support Centre, which identifies five operational areas relative to resource efficiency: energy management, water savings, materials efficiency, waste management and sustainable chemicals. The tool provides a tailored list of knowledge and support services most relevant to the company’s specific needs taken from the SME Support Centre.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Energy/Qualitative Environmental/Qualitative Economic/Qualitative
Impawatt [29]	IMPlementAtion Work and Actions To change the energy culture	Users can input energy consumption, cost and heating data for a specific year and the tool will return a series of graphs on the consumption profile. it is also possible to enter planned energy efficiency measures and add the commissioning date of the measure. This gives the opportunity to create a simple energy efficiency plan that provides an overview of what can be done and what has already been achieved.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
PINE Full Audit Tool [30]	PINE project, Promoting Industrial Energy Efficiency	A shared model for auditing procedures is created and an excel tool is developed accordingly, in order to conduct a full audit, provide a set of benchmarks and a recommendations checklist. 140 full audits were developed with this tool.	Industry SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
Plant Energy Profiler Excel (PEPEx) [31]	US Department of Energy—Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy	The tool is Excel based and aimed at helping industrial managers identify and understand the energy profile of their plant and how it can be optimised. A customised report is produced, including information on energy supply and consumption, potential cost and energy savings, and a list of recommendations to save energy.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
RETScreen® Clean Energy Management Software [32]	Government of Canada	The tool is dedicated to continuous energy performance analysis and assessment of the feasibility of energy efficiency, renewable energy and cogeneration projects. It enables managers to monitor the actual performance of plants, helping to identify most effective clean energy projects and quickly analyse their technical and financial feasibility.	Industry and Tertiary (also public sector) Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Environmental/Quantitative Economic/Quantitative
SME Carbon Footprint Calculator [33]	Carbon Trust	The tool measures the corporate emission footprint following GHG Protocol Guidance, including direct emissions from fuel and processes (Scope 1 emissions) and those emissions from purchased electricity (or Scope 2 emissions) for the assets they operate. Consumption of fuel, electricity and F gas (Fluorinated greenhouse gas) is taken into account.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Environmental/Quantitative
Software for self-assessment of the degree of energy efficiency of the SME [34]	ES-PA project, Energy and Sustainability for Public Administration	Software allowing SMEs to conduct an initial self-assessment of energy efficiency level. The tool is made available to Regions, which should support its adoption in their business systems, in order to foster identification and implementation of EPIAs. In this way the competitiveness of local productive sectors can be sustained, together with their respective industrial districts.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
SPEEDIER Energy Expert Support Tool [35]	SPEEDIER project, SME Program for Energy Efficiency through Delivery and Implementation of EneRgy Audits	The tool aims at streamlining energy auditing process in SMEs. It has been developed using information from SME characterization previously collected in earlier stages of the project: this is the input for the tool which, on this basis, will suggest a number of suitable EPIAs.	Buildings Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative

Table 1. Overview of existing tools, from https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101000132/results (accessed on 30 July 2025).

Name, Link	Project/Institution	Description	Sector and Company Targeted	Elements Covered and Method
Benchmark-Confronto consumi [19]	Agenzia per l’Energia Alto Adige—CasaClima, Austrian Energy Agency and Alperia	The tool provides a comparison with benchmark indicators of similar companies in the same sector. It does not provide recommendations of possible EPIAs to be introduced.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative
Business Carbon Calculator [23]	Normative/SME Climate Hub	The tool estimates full carbon footprint and identifies quick-win actions to reduce emissions.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Environmental/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
Calculator for optimizing electricity consumption in the company [24]	Government of Poland	The tool is an electricity savings calculator, which provides simplified calculations that do not require specialist technical knowledge. It helps SMEs identify the potential for energy savings, as well as estimate the cost of investment related to the replacement and purchase of new, more energy-efficient equipment. The calculator is a first step toward the accomplishment of an energy audit.	Offices, catering and hotel services SMEs	Energy/Qualitative Economic/Qualitative
Energy Footprint Management Self-Rating Tool [25]	SMEnergy project, Energy Footprint Management for SMEs	The tool allows companies in Food and Beverage, Metal and Chemical, and Construction sectors to compute their energy footprint with measurements of total energy consumption per source of energy.	Two industrial sectors and Construction SMEs	Energy/Quantitative
Energy Performance Indicator Tool [26]	US Department of Energy— Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy	The tool can be used to establish a normalised baseline of energy consumption, calculate Energy Performance Indicators, monitor EPIAs implementation and evaluate cost savings and avoided CO2 emissions. Metrics can be assessed for a single facility, multiple facilities within a corporation, or enterprise wide. In this way, corporate energy performance can be calculated.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Environmental/Quantitative Economic/Quantitative
First Energy Check [18]	Assolombarda—ENEA	The software is available for companies registered to Assolombarda, the largest regional association of the enterprise system in Italy. It processes data entered and provides a report describing areas for improvement with an indication of the company position compared to others in the same sector. Comparable benchmarks refer to companies with similar characteristics that populated the tool and they will be updated as long as new companies use the tool.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
ICCEE toolbox [27]	ICCEE project, Improving Cold Chain Energy Efficiency	Among the different available project tools, one is devoted to assessing energy consumption of the SMEs in the cold chains of food and beverage sector (Cold supply chain tool) and another to supporting the undertaking of EPIAs (Life cycle costing tool). To facilitate the adoption of EEMs, non energy benefits are also assessed by a dedicated tool (Benchmarking non-energy benefits). The project approach shifts from the single company perspective to the chain assessment, trying to exploit the associated saving potential and facilitate decision-making.	Cold chain in food sector SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Quantitative Environmental/Qualitative
I-GO Assistant [28]	Green Industry Pl	This resource self-assessment and navigation tool establishes the current resource efficiency status based on actions taken to date, location, business sector and size. No detailed data is needed, given the tool’s output is not a diagnostic review. The tool is related to the SME Support Centre, which identifies five operational areas relative to resource efficiency: energy management, water savings, materials efficiency, waste management and sustainable chemicals. The tool provides a tailored list of knowledge and support services most relevant to the company’s specific needs taken from the SME Support Centre.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Energy/Qualitative Environmental/Qualitative Economic/Qualitative
Impawatt [29]	IMPlementAtion Work and Actions To change the energy culture	Users can input energy consumption, cost and heating data for a specific year and the tool will return a series of graphs on the consumption profile. it is also possible to enter planned energy efficiency measures and add the commissioning date of the measure. This gives the opportunity to create a simple energy efficiency plan that provides an overview of what can be done and what has already been achieved.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
PINE Full Audit Tool [30]	PINE project, Promoting Industrial Energy Efficiency	A shared model for auditing procedures is created and an excel tool is developed accordingly, in order to conduct a full audit, provide a set of benchmarks and a recommendations checklist. 140 full audits were developed with this tool.	Industry SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
Plant Energy Profiler Excel (PEPEx) [31]	US Department of Energy—Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy	The tool is Excel based and aimed at helping industrial managers identify and understand the energy profile of their plant and how it can be optimised. A customised report is produced, including information on energy supply and consumption, potential cost and energy savings, and a list of recommendations to save energy.	Industry and Tertiary Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
RETScreen® Clean Energy Management Software [32]	Government of Canada	The tool is dedicated to continuous energy performance analysis and assessment of the feasibility of energy efficiency, renewable energy and cogeneration projects. It enables managers to monitor the actual performance of plants, helping to identify most effective clean energy projects and quickly analyse their technical and financial feasibility.	Industry and Tertiary (also public sector) Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Environmental/Quantitative Economic/Quantitative
SME Carbon Footprint Calculator [33]	Carbon Trust	The tool measures the corporate emission footprint following GHG Protocol Guidance, including direct emissions from fuel and processes (Scope 1 emissions) and those emissions from purchased electricity (or Scope 2 emissions) for the assets they operate. Consumption of fuel, electricity and F gas (Fluorinated greenhouse gas) is taken into account.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Environmental/Quantitative
Software for self-assessment of the degree of energy efficiency of the SME [34]	ES-PA project, Energy and Sustainability for Public Administration	Software allowing SMEs to conduct an initial self-assessment of energy efficiency level. The tool is made available to Regions, which should support its adoption in their business systems, in order to foster identification and implementation of EPIAs. In this way the competitiveness of local productive sectors can be sustained, together with their respective industrial districts.	Industry and Tertiary SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative
SPEEDIER Energy Expert Support Tool [35]	SPEEDIER project, SME Program for Energy Efficiency through Delivery and Implementation of EneRgy Audits	The tool aims at streamlining energy auditing process in SMEs. It has been developed using information from SME characterization previously collected in earlier stages of the project: this is the input for the tool which, on this basis, will suggest a number of suitable EPIAs.	Buildings Not specifically SMEs	Energy/Quantitative Economic/Qualitative

All listed tools are freely available, while commercially available tools are not shown. The list of tools provided is not exhaustive, but it aims to show the context in which the ATENEA4SME new tool should be placed.

All tools have different levels of complexity: some of them include detailed data on the energy consumption profile of companies, whereas others compute aggregated CO₂ or greenhouse gas emissions.

The majority of them are qualitative tools, although under the energy dimension, some of them provide quantitative analyses. Such tools are RETScreen 4.0^® (provided by the Government of Canada), ICCEE toolbox (resulting from a European project funded in the Horizon Programme), Plant Energy Profiler Excel (PEPEx) and Energy Performance Indicator Tool, both provided by the U.S. Government.

Besides being quantitative under the energy standpoint, ICCEE is focused on a specific economic sector, namely the cold food and beverage supply chains. Energy quantitative analyses on multiple sectors are performed instead by RETScreen^®, PEPEx and Energy Performance Indicator Tool: they mainly allow the user comparing the energy performance of the plant to a benchmark based on a wide dataset, and evaluating quantitatively EPIAs.

Another tool helping the user perform energy audits is PINE, which also provides a set of benchmarks and a recommendations checklist. PINE, however, does not analyse quantitatively the economic performance of the EPIAs. Among listed tools, only two take water savings into consideration: RETScreen^® Clean Energy Management Software and I-GO Assistant. This last tool, however, as described in the table, does not provide detailed information at quantitative level. Other tools address multiple benefits, referring to different aspects in addition to environmental ones, concerning the community level as a whole and not exclusive to the single company; the tool developed by the Multiple Impacts CAlculation Tool (MICAT) project is an example.

It is important to consider the way different tools manage information evolution in time, namely if the tool is dynamic, constantly updated with new collected information, or static. All the tools listed in the table are static, except for RETScreen^® Clean Energy Management Software and First Energy Check. The tool’s dynamism allows the user to have a complete overview of the energy efficiency of the site being analysed, which also takes into account the specificities of the various product sectors.

3. ATENEA4SME a Tool for Energy Audit: A Comprehensive Description

The purpose of the ATENEA4SME tool is to assist manufacturing and tertiary SMEs with energy audits and the self-evaluation of energy efficiency options. The Integrated Development Environment (IDE) of the tool is Microsoft Excel Office with the support of VBA language, diffusely used to automate the calculation, verification, selection and validation procedures. Compatibility tests have been carried out on several machines ensuring backward compatibility up to 2010 versions of Excel and Windows XP operating system and forward compatibility to all the most recent versions of Excel and Windows 11. Moreover, security protection and certificates to the whole structure of the pages and of the sections is provided. The complete datasheet of the tool is composed of 275 calculation pages: the user can populate 100 pages in order to compile the energy audit and has the support of 175 calculation pages.

The spreadsheet tool is based on input data from the user, regarding energy usage at the site, i.e., installed appliances and their routine employ, and on custom answers concerning the technological development of the company. All information extracted from the ENEA energy audit database is sorted according to the relevant NACE code of the activities carried out at the site.

3.1. Sections of the Tool

The sections of the tool are eight:

(a)

Company general information;

(b)

Energy demand;

(c)

Inventory;

(d)

Performance indicators;

(e)

Energy Efficiency Intervention;

(f)

General Summary and Report Documentation;

(g)

Water Section.

3.1.1. Company General Information

The section of the company general information is the first part of the tool where general details of the SME and the NACE code identifying the production sector or the service that is the subject to the energy audit can be inserted and selected (Figure 1). NACE code has a six-digit alphanumeric format and it has a legislative basis on the EUROSTAT corporation guidelines for the NACE database (ref. a. Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community), adapted by the ISTAT [36] for the industrial and economic setting of Italy. From the selected NACE code, by means of the internal VBA-programmed macro, the tool automatically opens and updates the customized subsequent sections referring to the desired economic or industrial sector. The audit can be compiled for the current year (N) and for the previous years (N−1 and N−2) and it can be customized in relation to the company dimensions: i.e., micro, small and medium enterprises.

3.1.2. Energy Demand

The second section of the tool is a detailed data collection and elaboration of the energy demand, categorized by subsections (electric, thermal and transportation) and particularized by energy carrier. First of all, the electrical consumption subsection can be populated with monthly data of energy and costs, divided by Peak-Off-Peak timeslots—F1, F2, F3. The thermal subsections of consumption highlight the most used solid and liquid fuels and it is possible to quantify the value of energy purchased and used for heating or for cooling purposes. The fuels taken into account are methane gas, LPG, diesel, fuel oil, petroleum coke, biomass, chips of wood or of other materials. The consumption can be also customized for a generic energy carrier introducing the lower calorific value (LCV). The third subsection is for the transportation consumption data, customized for the main energy carriers of road vehicles. In the fourth and final sub section there is a summary providing a complete overview of the consumption, with details regarding electrical, thermal and transportation subsections and energy carriers.

This data collection section can be filled in referring to three years: N, N−1 and N−2, thus providing the user with the possibility to analyse the performance of the plant along the last three years.

3.1.3. Inventory

The Inventory section presents a first part common to all NACE codes named Internal Transformation, where the user can quantify the energy that is self-produced by the company: cogeneration and trigeneration plants, renewable sources plants—photovoltaic, wind power, thermodynamic solar- and custom sources. The user can operate a choice on the engine of the cogeneration or trigeneration system (gas turbine or internal combustion engines), the electrical power of the system and the energy vector or vectors necessary for the operation. The next step is to quantify the electrical energy, heat or cold produced and self-consumed. The tool calculates the performance of the plant with the global and electrical efficiencies, the number of yearly hours necessary to ensure the desired level of performance.

Thermal, electrical and transportation inventories are customized for the NACE sector selected in Section 3.1.1, “Company general information”. Several customized pages which refer to various areas of the tertiary sector (banks, real estate, offices, healthcare, utilities, large-scale retail trade, transport, telecommunications) and manufacturing (pasta factories, rubber and plastic industry, glass, ceramics, steel, paper, cement) have been developed. Moreover, there are two generic inventories that offer the possibility of being fully customizable, one for industrial activities and one for the services. The inventory pages are organised and divided by activities and services, following the guidelines written by ENEA on energy audits, in which the levels of detail for a productive or economic site are defined (Figure 2). In particular, users create the inventories by inserting single industrial processes, grouped as main activities, auxiliary services and general services [3,4].

The final purpose of the inventories is the detailed distribution of the consumption of all individual equipment items and the balance with the values of the internal transformation and of the energy bills inserted in Section 3.1.2. Since it is a self-assessment procedure, the consumption distribution is considered balanced with a tolerance of 5% between values of inventory, internal transformation and bills. Moreover, the tool offers the possibility to insert monitored consumption, if available: this allows the user to integrate ATENEA4SME with data collection from monitoring systems, such as those supported by Italian incentives as Industry 4.0. If measurements are not possible, mathematical models have been developed in order to estimate the energy demand. In the model, starting from information given by the SME, the user can build the energy consumption. In the following the mathematical model has been described. As an example, for electrical, thermal and transportation sections, the following formula have been used:

(1)

Electrical Consumption

$$E_{el}=P_{eff}·h·gg·f_u$$

(1)

$$P_{eff}={\displaystyle \frac{P_n·f_c}{{\eta }_e}}$$

(2)

where E_el is the estimated electrical consumption, P_eff is the effective power of the equipment, h is the working time in hours per day, gg is the number of working days, f_u is the load factor, P_n the nominal power of the equipment, f_c the consumption factor and ${\eta }_e$ the efficiency.

(2)

Thermal Consumption

$$E_t=P_{tn}·h·gg·f_c·{\displaystyle \frac{f_u}{{\eta }_t}}$$

(3)

where E_t is the estimated thermal consumption, h the working time in hours per day and ${\eta }_t$ the thermal efficiency of the equipment.

(3)

Transportation Consumption

$$E_{tr}=n·C_s·h·gg·d$$

(4)

where E_tr is the estimated transportation consumption, h the working time of vehicles in hours, n the number of vehicles of the fleet, $C_s$ the specific fuel consumption and d the distance covered per day in km.

3.1.4. Performance Indicators

This section is devoted to the evaluation of the Energy Performance Indicators (EnPI) of the SME and to provide a detailed summary of energy consumption, internal energy transformation, and inventory distribution, collected and reported in a standardized sheet (F sheet), customized for each NACE code. Moreover, it allows adding qualitative information relating to the characteristics of the site and of the installed systems (e.g., age of the systems, presence of energy management systems, characteristics of the monitoring systems, etc.) and the list of previously implemented energy interventions.

This section is divided into three sub-sections:

• EnPI;
• Survey;
• Summary (F) sheet.

In the EnPI page, the user should insert the value of production and raw materials used, in order to calculate the indexes of global, electrical and thermal performance of the activities, by using the energy distribution consumption evaluated in the Inventory Section. As for raw materials, this means the total quantity of material that the site has processed for the production of the goods while net production means the quantity of finished products, as defined by the NACE code declaration. Finally, gross production refers to net production plus semi-finished products shipped to other production sites.

In this section, graphs and tables summarizing the energy performance of the site, as well as the EnPI of the NACE sector to which the company belongs have been reported [36]. EnPI values are compared to average values included in an internal database, in which standard deviations are reported. The reference values were drawn up by ENEA on the basis of the statistical analysis of the energy performance of the companies reported in the collected energy audits. They are available also online at [37]. The comparison is possible thanks to the data inserted by the user on a three-year basis: in this regard, the three-year comparison allows the user to clearly see what is the historic performance of the facility and understand if there are improvements in the energy consumption pattern.

The summary (F) sheets are standard templates created by ENEA in collaborations with trade associations, in order to facilitate companies in reporting energy consumption. The user does not have to enter any values in the summary sheets. He will find a summary of all site consumption by functional area of the company and energy carrier, as well as all the information relating to the monitored consumption already reported in Section 3.1.3. They are divided into general summary tables, which include company details and data on energy purchases and annual site production, and summary tables by energy carrier, which show the breakdown by main activities, auxiliary services and general services, as well as by individual company function.

This section ends with a mandatory survey, required to introduce information regarding the quality of the facilities presents in the plant. This survey is essential in order to customize the tool output relating to NACE code. The mandatory survey on the energy efficiency is divided in 17 areas: pumping systems, suction systems, compressed air, thermal power plant/heat recovery, air conditioning, cogeneration/trigeneration, process cooling, energy management, lighting, electrical systems, building envelope, production lines, electric motors/inverters, production from renewable sources, power factor correction, transport, distribution networks. A quantitative score has been assigned to each area, in order to calculate a hierarchical list of suggested areas of interventions by recurring to an original algorithm based on weighted scores. In the following subsection details on the mathematical model have been reported.

Mathematical Model of the Suggested Intervention Areas

Results obtained by the survey are used to evaluate the quality of energy consumption inside the SME and of the energy management of the site. It is made up of 70 questions, in 19 tabs, relating to the energetic characteristics of the site. The information given in the questionnaire is used to draw up a ranking of the recommended areas of intervention and, as a consequence, results can be strongly affected by the answers given by the enterprises.

The tool carries out a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the preferential intervention areas and suggests a ranking with potential interventions.

It implements the following steps:

(1)

Identification of the most interesting areas of intervention for the site in question based on the energy consumption data given by the user, from the database of cost-effectiveness and from the results of the survey.

(2)

Technical–economic evaluation of single- or multiple-EPIAs.

Regarding point 2, the program carries out a technical-economic analysis by developing indicators such as the NPV, the IRR and the payback time. This is done in the following section (energy efficiency interventions).

With reference to point (1), the tool selects the areas of intervention through a multi-criteria analysis, considering three decision criteria:

(a)

The distribution of energy consumption (priority is given to areas of intervention with higher energy consumption);

(b)

The quality of the current energy systems (intervention areas with older systems should be favoured) evaluated by means of the survey;

(c)

The average value of the cost effectiveness of interventions in the sector (the areas of intervention with the lowest specific costs should be favoured).

For each criteria, the tool calculates normalized weights based on the following:

i.

The energy consumption of the area;

ii.

The score obtained along the questionnaire;

iii.

The normalized value of the cost effectiveness of the intervention area.

It is believed that the size of the company also influences the type of intervention it could adopt. High-level interventions or large capital investments (e.g., cogeneration, photovoltaic power, etc.) may not be suitable for small businesses with low consumption. In any case, at the moment, there is no information that allows us to skim the interventions on the basis of this factor and, for this reason, only the ratio between cost and saving has been considered, independently form the absolute cost. This parameter could anyway be discussed and updated in the future.

EPIAs have been grouped into 17 areas of intervention, according to a classification methodology elaborated by ENEA for the annual report on energy audits developed for the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security since 2020, the sectoral notebooks published on ten different tertiary and industrial sectors and the detailed list of intervention developed for the Ministerial Decree 256/2024 [38]. EPIAs’ classification takes the distribution of energy consumption of the various activities (or company functions) and the quality of the systems into account.

With reference to point (a), the highest priority EPIAs, whether managerial or technological, should be identified among activities or functions characterized by higher consumption.

Referring to point (b), priority has been given to EPIAs in areas with older production systems.

Finally, regarding point (c), the different types of EPIAs have a different cost effectiveness, which can also vary, based on the NACE code to which they belong. Users can also choose whether to include the cost-effectiveness parameter (ratio between the cost of the intervention and the annual energy savings that this can generates) in the evaluation of the suggested interventions. By combining these criteria, EPIAs or groups of them, can be selected as the most appropriated to the company’s situation.

The proposed mathematical model implemented in the tool is a sort of multi-criteria analysis, in which areas of intervention and company activities have been weighted following criteria of cost effectiveness, quality and energy consumption of the SME under investigation. Finally, the three weights are multiplied, identifying which areas of intervention should be taken into greater consideration by the company.

The mathematical model considers K intervention area (17 areas, following the classification made by ENEA [37]) and L activities identified as peculiar for the NACE code of the SME. The algorithm automatically excludes non logical combination (l,k) between areas of intervention and activities. An example can be the exclusion of the substitution of boilers or heat pump respect to the ambient lighting activity. The total weight of the l-th activity belonging to the k-th intervention area has been evaluated as

$$\begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{cc} \begin{array}{cc}{w}_{l,k}=w_k^1·w_k^2·w_{l,k}^3& \end{array}& \forall k\in K\end{array}& \forall l\in I\end{array}$$

(5)

where $w_k={\sum }_{l=1}^n{w}_{l,k}$, the total weight of the k-th intervention area and where:

• K: set of intervention areas;
• k: k-th intervention area;
• I: set of activities;
• n: number of activities within the site;
• l: l-th activity on the site;
• $w_k^1$: economic weight of the intervention area (related to cost-effectiveness);
• $w_k^2$: qualitative weight of the intervention area (from the survey);
• $w_{l,k}^3$: energy weight of the l-th activity of the site related to the intervention area k;
• $w_k$: total weight of the k-th single area of intervention.

The mathematical model can be described by recurring to a matrix representation, where the areas of intervention are identified by rows and the company’s activities are represented by the columns (classified as main activities, auxiliary services, general services). At the intersection of rows and columns, scores are calculated as the product of the weights and are normalized by dividing for the total score of the area of intervention. By adopting this model, a ranking of area of interventions can be obtained by sorting from the highest value of $w_k$, identifying the area of intervention where it is suggested to act in the first place, to the lowest one, which instead identifies the area of intervention where it is not suggested to implement an intervention. Figure 3 shows an example of the matrix for the ceramic NACE code 23.31.00. In the calculation, non-logic coupling between activities and area of interventions are excluded (grey boxes). Economic $w_k^1$ can be included or not in the evaluation of the ranking and they can be updated following the evolution of the energy market. In the following subsection more details have been included in order to explain the assignment of the final score.

Score Strategies

Weights $w_{l,k}$ range between 0 and 1 and are normalized as follows:

–

For the intervention areas, their first weight ($w_k^1$) is derived from the cost effectiveness of the interventions, while the second ($w_k^2$) is derived from the results of the questionnaire, as explained below;

–

For company functions, the energy weight of the individual activity ($w_{l,k}$) has been normalized, according to the overall consumption of the site. Electricity and thermal energy consumption are therefore considered together.

The assignment of economic weights ($w_k^1$) of the k-th area of intervention are calculated starting from the cost effectiveness ${ce}_k$ (Euro/tep) taken from the database [39] and are normalized by using the following expression:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{cc}{w}_k^1\begin{array}{cc}={\displaystyle \frac{\frac{1}{{ce}_k}}{{\sum }_{k=1}^K\frac{1}{{ce}_k}}}& \end{array}& \forall k\in K=17\end{array}& \end{array}$$

(6)

By using these normalized weights $w_k^1$, it is possible to evaluate energy saved for unit of money spent. The cost-effectiveness value for each area of intervention is derived from the statistics of the Ricerca di Sistema 19–21 program [39,40]. During the activities of this program, the cost-effectiveness values were calculated for the 17 areas of intervention in some NACE sectors in the industrial sector. These values, although referring only to the industrial sector and only to large companies, were used to define an average cost-effectiveness value for each area of intervention. The user can select the option of considering weights $w_k^1$ or not, in case the cost of energy efficiency interventions undergoes significant variations. Moreover, the database can be dynamically updated.

Weight coefficients $w_k^2$, related to the quality of the systems, are linked to the results of the questionnaire. Different groups of questions refer to the k-th areas of intervention, determining a maximum achievable score for the same area: the higher the score, the greater the level of technological development of the company or the quality of the systems (new generation systems, ordinary maintenance carried out periodically, etc.). In order to compute $w_k^2$, the following expression has been used:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{cc}{w}_k^2=1-{\displaystyle \frac{p_k}{p_{k,T}}}& \forall k\in K=17\end{array}& \end{array}$$

(7)

where $p_k$ is the score obtained answering to the k-th group of questions and $p_{k,T}$ is the total maximum score achievable for that group. The higher the score, the greater the level of technological development of the company or the quality of the systems and for this reason, the complement to 1 has been considered to create the ranking of suggested areas of interventions.

Finally, $w_{l,k}^3$ weights of the l-th activity of the site related to the intervention area k are calculated by dividing the energy consumption of the activity by the total consumption of the site.

In order to obtain the hierarchical list of suggested intervention areas, the total score $W_k$ has been calculated by using the following expression:

$$W_k=\begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{cc}{\displaystyle \frac{{\sum }_{l=1}^n{w}_{l,k}}{{\sum }_{k=1}^K{\sum }_{l=1}^n{w}_{l,k}}}={\displaystyle \frac{w_k}{{\sum }_{k=1}^K{w}_k}}& \forall k\in K\end{array}& \end{array}$$

(8)

Higher values of $W_k$ mean the urgent need to plan an intervention of energy efficiency.

3.1.5. Energy Performance Improvement Actions

This section is based on pre-populated and customized EPIAs that can be selected by the user, regarding the employ of energy-efficient technologies [13], operational improvements [14] and energy-oriented maintenance [41,42]. EPIAs are sorted in three groups: electrical, thermal and other generic interventions. There is the possibility to customize an action not included in the database by filling a precompiled sheet. In order to evaluate the energy savings obtained, sheets are fully linked with other Sections, in particular with Section 3.1.2 (Energy demand) and Section 3.1.3 (Inventory), in order to compare energy consumption for the technology currently used inside the SME and for the one suggested. In fact, the structure of the EPIAs pages aims to find out the thermal or electrical consumption of industrial equipment, support equipment or general systems, as well as to realise their technical characteristics in detail in order to be able to decide which ones need to be replaced or modernised. Some pages provide a comparison between the old and the modern equipment, others are based on modifying the technical characteristics of existing equipment, such as inverter regulation or power factor correction, others are based on the ex-novo installation of energy efficiency systems, in particular photovoltaic systems, solar thermal systems and cogeneration plants. Savings are evaluated in terms of energy, environmental and economic benefits. After entering the cost of each investment, with the possibility of adding customized incentives, economic savings are computed from energy savings in terms of energy carrier saving along with its cost, imported form Section 3.1.2.

The tool considers all the kind of incentives available in the Italian legislative framework. Such kind of incentives include capital cost support (such as Conto Termico 2.0, which provides a percentage of the capital cost expenditures of several energy saving actions) and operative cost support (such as White Certificates for additional certified energy savings depending on innovative efficient installations, incentives for renewable energy production like FER X programme, which is dedicated to the production of electricity from renewables, or the upcoming FER-T programme, dedicated to large scale thermal energy production from renewables). It is worth here to mention that also fiscal incentives can be included in the latter category, since they provide a refund of the capital cost expenses generally in a 10-year framework: this is the case of the so-called Ecobonus and Bonus Casa, which are intended to support EPIAs in buildings.

The economic indexes used, within the cash flows, are the return period of the investment, the internal rate of return, the net present value, the net present value based on the investment, the payback period. Capital budgeting and profitability analysis are run with updated or simulated energy market prices. Users can perform the analyses with current energy process or using other values to perform sensitivity analyses, by considering fluctuations of energy market prices in order to present a more accurate and complete scenario.

Results are automatically exported to the General Summary Section and can be easily automatically corrected and removed. Figure 4 shows the layout of the main page of Section 3.1.5, in which a database of precompiled algorithms can be selected by the user.

The database can be dynamically updated and expanded and presently it contains more than 24 EPIA algorithms reported in

Table 2. List of pre-calculated EPIAs in ATENEA4SME.

EPIA	Description
Electric motors	Substitution of electric motors
Compressor inverters	Installation of compressor inverters
Air ventilation inverter	Installation of air ventilation inverters
Power factor correction	Power factor correction
UPS installation	UP installation
Public lighting	Lamp substitution in public lighting
Cold storage	Freezers substitution or cold storage rooms improvement
Lighting	Lamp substitution in ambient lighting
PV plant	PV plant installation
Refrigerators	Installation of air/water condensed refrigerators
Biomass heating	Installation of a biomass heating plant
Biomass heating (greenhouse)	Installation of a biomass heating plant for greenhouse
Boiler	Boiler substitution
Biomethane public transport	Biomethane use in public transportation
Electric vehicles	Electric vehicle uses for public transportation
Hybrid vehicles	Hybrid vehicle uses for public transportation
Methane vehicles	Methane use in public transportation
LPG vehicles	LPG use in public transportation
Surface insulation	Wall insulation and window replacement

. Each action module contains a properly developed algorithm needed to evaluate energy savings and to perform the economic analysis. In the following some examples are provided and details regarding input parameters and general information of the suggested EPIAs can be found in the User Guide that the user can download from [43].

3.1.6. General Summary and Report Documentation

The results of all the energy, environmental, and economic analysis are shown in the summary table. A final editable and printable report can also be generated by the user, in which information and results obtained in the analysis are reported along with graphs. All selected interventions are shown in the summary table, along with all main calculated parameters. The editable report is a thorough draft of the energy audit and contains a selection of data and figures produced by the program.

The report is the actual and complete energy audit ready for the company, consisting of 90 pages converted in word file format, ready to be consulted and printed.

Finally, it is worth to mention that the user can voluntarily send the results of their analysis to ENEA: this feature is meant to enlarge the ENEA database and improve the indicators and parameters used in the tool.

3.1.7. Water Section

Water, a vital and common resource, is fundamental to all life forms on Earth, playing a central role in sustainable development being crucial for the socio-economic development, health ecosystems and human well-being. Climate change and population growth have increased demand for water, heightening the awareness of water as a precious resource, necessitating its safeguarding, protection, as well as careful and responsible use.

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda emphasizes responsible water resource management as a key objective in sustainable development, specifically under Goal 6. Assessing the water footprint of activities is instrumental in promoting efficient and sustainable water use.

The “Directive EU 2023/1791 increases the focus on water consumption for companies obligated to develop an energy audit, encouraging them to report on their annual volume of water consumption (in cubic metres) and it comparison with previous years.”

In Europe, industry accounts for approximately 45% of water demand, with agriculture close behind at 42%. On other continents, agriculture is the largest water consumer. In Italy, for instance, 55% of total water consumption is attributed to agriculture, followed by the industrial and municipal sectors at 27% and 18%, respectively.

This tool section aims to help SMEs understand their specific water consumption, i.e., the water usage per unit of product. By using this tool, SMEs can broaden their sustainability awareness, extending beyond energy consumption to include water usage. While energy consumption assessments hold both environmental and economic significance, water consumption evaluations have predominantly environmental implications, due to low withdrawal costs. However, in light of climate change, SMEs will soon need to address water consumption critically.

In fact, efforts to reduce water consumption and losses do not necessarily result in economic benefits, their value lies primarily in ethical and environmental considerations.

With the advancing impacts of climate change, SMEs will soon be required to address this pressing matter. This has led to the development of a part of the tool dedicated to water consumption management. Environmentally, it’s crucial to integrate “water management” into corporate management, which is currently focused solely on economic aspects. This integration, along with consumption awareness, will encourage water-intensive SMEs to invest in water reduction technologies. These evaluations are most effective when conducted for at least two consecutive years after completing the tool.

Water Section Use and Structure

This tool evaluates a company’s water consumption in two ways, based on its internal organization. Users can choose to apply the tool to either individual processes and sub-processes (Case A) or individual products (Case B).

Case A involves the user in listing each process of the industrial activity, along with a brief description in the tool’s first section (process index). The user then (1) selects the evaluation year, (2) names the product under evaluation, and (3) specifies the monthly production quantities with their respective units of measurement from a dropdown menu. This section ends after reporting the monthly drinking water supplied by the water service management company.

In section two, the user indicates the water source, choosing from options such as a well, surface water body, public or private water provider, rainwater, or other. Descriptions of any sub-processes and the method of monitoring monthly water supplied must be included. Monitoring can be (a) direct measurement (the user, thanks to the presence of a measuring device, already knows the monthly water volume used for each sub-process), (b) indirect evaluation (if flow and monthly working hours are known), (c) or full evaluation (when monthly working hours and the main pump data, e.g., power, prevalence, efficiency, are known); as far as (b) and (c) points are concerned, the monthly water withdrawal is automatically calculated. This evaluation can be made for each water supply pump; moreover, the tool automatically calculates the total and specific monthly water consumption. If a water recycling system is present, its details must be specified (as for the part of the section related to withdrawal), and the tool will automatically assess the total monthly recycled water with the same calculation methods as the main withdrawals. Any discharged water should also be reported, along with any additional relevant information. All the above-mentioned steps must be reported in the subsequent sections for the other processes/sub-processes as well as auxiliary services. At the end of each section, the yearly data for consumption, recycled and discharged water are automatically reported. In the last two sections of the tool, the overall annual data for consumption, recycling, and discharge of water are presented in aggregate form.

Case B begins similarly, with the user (a) selecting the evaluation year, (b) providing brief descriptions of each product (product index), (c) reporting both the monthly production quantities (with the relative unit of measurement from the drop-down menu) and (d) adding the monthly drinking water withdrawals supplied by the water service management company. The rest of the compilation of the tool mirrors Case A.

The classification in main activities, auxiliary services and general services is present also in the water section of the tool.

3.2. Dissemination Activities

The dissemination activity was focused on the sponsorship and on the continuous updating of the ATENEA4SME tool. During 2023, a series of events were organized (in person and online) aimed at presenting the characteristics of the tool to all stakeholders. The events were organized as part of the second year of the SME Awareness Plan (in according with legislative Decree n. 102/2014 Art. 8 paragraph ter): almost 700 people in person and over 2000 remotely took part.

One of the most important characteristics of ATENEA4SME is the ability to be a dynamic tool, capable of calibrating the analysis of energy consumption and efficiency opportunities according to the product category to which the company belongs (industrial or tertiary sector). This aspect therefore distinguishes the tool from many others already present in the literature and available online. In fact, the tool provides different results depending on the NACE code of the activity being analysed. This aspect is one of the main ones on which the dissemination campaign of the tool was also based, leveraging on meetings with representatives of specific productive and economic sectors, in order to tailor the release of ATENEA4SME with practical and typical examples of the specific involved sectors.

The tool was released together with an online form allowing users to report issues and help requests [44]. The submitted feedback was used to address bugs still present in the tool and continuously update it, in collaboration with the School of Engineering of the University of Basilicata. Thanks to the online form and the received reports, the tool was updated twice during 2023 and is still updated, with the aim to further improve it.

3.3. A Case Study of ATENEA4SME Application

ATENEA4SME has been designed and developed to be used in 18 macro NACE sectors and more than 1200 NACE sub-codes, ranging from tertiary sector (banks, real estate, offices, healthcare, utilities, large-scale retail trade, transport, telecommunications) to manufacturing (pasta factories, rubber and plastic industry, glass, ceramics, steel, paper, cement). Inventories have been introduced for each macro NACE code and customizable inventories have been included, one for industrial activities and one for the services. Moreover, 24 precompiled interventions sheets have been included. In the paper we present a case study for a company with NACE code 22.29.09—“Manufacture of other not classified plastic articles”. After inserting general information in Section 3.1.1, Company general information, the tool, by means of a VBA code, leads the user to Section 3.1.2, Section 3.1.3 and Section 3.1.4 by opening already precompiled and customized sheets. Section 3.1.2 is populated with the energy purchased referred to the year N of the audit, but it can be extended to the N−1 and N−2 years. In the example, the reference year is 2018 and the company is an energy-intensive one. The user must populate the energy demand from monthly energy bills, distinguishing by different carriers used. Monitored data, if available, can also be included. On the specific case, the main entries of the energy demand consist of electric current and methane gas for heating or industrial use, being 1,456,741 kWh–5,244,268 MJ and 8071 Sm³–282,498 MJ, respectively. Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the yearly energy demand of the enterprise, in which electric consumption represents the 95% of the total load.

The core of the audit is included the Inventory Section, where the user, interacting with the SME to get all required information, builds the mathematical model in order to evaluate the energy flows and the distribution among different areas. The inventory reconstruction of energy flows must consider the internal transformation energy and the balance between the model results and the energy demand, taken from Section 3.1.2 of the tool, must be fulfilled with a tolerance less than 5%. In this specific case, the company does not use internal production and transformation of energy. By populating the thermal, electrical and transportation inventories, it is shown that the most energy demanding pieces of equipment are presses, compressors and chillers along production lines for the electrical part. Finally, electric demand covers 95% of the total energy and the remaining 5% consists of thermal consumptions, absorbed by heat pumps, methane gas burners and boilers. By compiling the Inventory, consumptions are balanced with the purchases with an error lower than 1% and the required ENEA guidelines on monitored consumption percentage are respected. The total quantity of material that the site has processed for the production is 945 tons of plastic granules, while the global, electrical and thermal EnPIs are 5628 kWh/ton, 5545 kWh/ton and 298.73 MJ/m², respectively. Global and electrical EnPIs are above the average value of the NACE category, showing the virtuous energy consumption behaviour of the enterprise. Instead, for this NACE code, there is no statistical record available in literature for the evaluation of the thermal side. Results of the mandatory survey highlight the lack of renewable energy systems and the need to replace low efficiency chillers. Moreover, insulation of the lamination cylinders should be implemented and maintenance should be carried out. It was also decided to install a new opaque and transparent building envelope and a monitoring system for the energy consumption of the production line. Looking at the suggested interventions results, as described by the algorithm described in Section 3.1.4, the most profitable measures are the installation of a PV plant with storage and the installation of new and more efficient chillers, as described in the next subsection.

Description of the Energy Efficiency Measures: Photovoltaic Plant and Installation of Chillers

In ATENEA4SME, 40 precompiled algorithms are available for energy efficiency measures (Table 2). In the following, by referring to the case described in Section 3.3, we describe the sheets related to the installation of the photovoltaic plant and to the replacement of high efficiency chillers.

Regarding the installation of a photovoltaic plant with storage, the algorithm starts form the electrical energy demand as reported in Section 3.1.2, Energy demand. The user has the possibility to input the monthly based potential generation in terms of normalized energy produced kWh/kWp of installed nominal power. These data can be obtained from solar database such as PVGIS [45]. In order to evaluate the energy savings and the profitability of the plant, the self-consumed energy produced by the plant has been evaluated by using a mathematical model in which peak–off-peak electric demand has been compared with potential generation, taking into account that PV electric energy is produced during daily hours, which mainly belong to the F1 range. A weighted assignment of the self-consumed produced energy for all peak–off-peak ranges have been introduced. The user has the possibility to change the size of the PV plant in order to select the desired self-consumed energy and the capacity of the storage system. Moreover, the algorithm automatically calculates cash flow, VAN and PBT to evaluate the profitability of the intervention along with the energy saved. As for the dimensioning of the storage capacity, the model allows the possibility of a single storage cycle in one day (1% of yearly losses are considered for the storage system [38]) and the self-consumed energy can be increased by selecting a higher capacity of the storage system and at the same time, by checking the profitability of the design solution with the possibility of considering different cost values for energy and for the storage.

Several scenarios have been considered, taking different sizes and cost of the PV plant and of the storage system into account. In particular,

Table 3. Scenario of the intervention of the PV plant and storage system.

PV Power [kWp]	Storage [kWh]	Self Consumption	Cost of the System [k€]	PBP [years]	TIR	Cost of the Storage [€/kWh]
500	100	94%	510	7	15%	600
600	100	90%	600	7	15%	600
700	100	85%	690	7	15%	600
1000	100	65%	960	9	12%	600
1000	1000	84%	1500	13	7%	600
1000	1500	91%	1800	17	5%	600
1000	1000	84%	1300	11	9%	400
1000	1500	91%	1500	12	8%	400
700	1000	96%	1030	11	9%	400
700	1500	96%	1230	15	5%	400
500	1000	99%	850	14	6%	400
500	1500	99%	1050	>20	3%	400

shows the results of the technical-economic analysis. The size of the PV plant should consider the electrical consumption of the enterprise, which is 1,456,741 kWh with a monthly distribution reported in Figure 5 along with its Peak-Off-Peak distribution (F1, F2, F3). Figure 7a–c and Figure 8a–c show energy fluxes obtained by installing 500, 700 and 1000 kWp PV plants with a storage of 1000 kWh. By use of the tool it, is possible both to evaluate energy saving and, with detailed investment costs, to perform the economic analysis. Looking at the results, by tuning storage costs (Euro/kWh stored), the user can obtain different volumes of self-consumed energy, including the stored contribution, and results for the PBP. An undersized PV plant of 500 kWp is not sufficient to cover the energy demand of the enterprise, due to the prevalence of purchased energy and, as reported in Figure 8a, the storage system results totally unused in the case of a 500 kWp PV plant, being the energy totally self-consumed. In principle, if there is enough space, a PV plant of 1 MWp could be a good solution along with a storage system of 1 MWh, in order to minimize the volume of purchased energy from the grid with the result of introducing an important energy efficiency measure capable of protecting the enterprise from extremely risky electric energy price fluctuations. Given the large size of the plant, the company could take advantage of some incentive systems currently active in Italy, which allow financing the PV plant both in areas adjacent to the production site and at great distances, considering it as if it were a self-production renewable energy plant on site. It is worth adding that ATENEA4SME allows the user to also consider the incentive in the economic evaluation, both in terms of CAPEX covered and remuneration of any energy fed into the grid.

By implementing the intervention, it is possible to evaluate the CO₂ emission reduction and the NPV and payback time.

The second measure considered is the substitution of the chillers used to generate cooling fluid for the production line. The mathematical model adopted is based on the calculation of the difference of electrical energy consumptions [39]. The investment cost is 100,656 € with a discount rate of 3%, with an energy saving of 90,288 kWh and a reduction in CO₂ emissions of 26.6 t of CO₂. PBT is 9 years with an internal return rate of 12%. For the current assessment and the last section of the tool, no data is available regarding water consumption.

4. Discussion

This section is meant to analyse the main features of Aenea4SME and provide a comparison with other tools available online.

4.1. Strengths of the Tool

Firstly, it is worth stressing here that the tool is meant to be used by the SMEs independently, i.e., even without the help of an energy auditor. This is part of the strategy carried out by ENEA, whose aim is also to educate the SMEs towards a stronger attention on sustainability and the ability to be independent at least in a first analysis of their energy consumption patterns. Indeed, among the main barriers identified to the development of energy efficiency in SMEs is undoubtedly the often very small and family-run structure, which means that companies lack qualified professionals. Also for this reason, and in order to accommodate the reluctance of medium and small companies to disclose their energy consumption to a National Agency as ENEA, it was decided to make ATENEA4SME a downloadable tool: this allows the companies to use the tool without the need to insert data on an online portal, which could have discouraged them from using the tool.

In the second place, for such reasons, ATENE4SME has been developed for a stationary analysis, made on yearly basis and presents the advantage of producing an overall picture of the system, which represents with the first and necessary steps to investigate shortcomings lacks in the energy system. Dynamic or AI-based analysis are relevant in a second stage when a more detailed and high resolution is required with a particular focus on a subsystem of the enterprise.

This said, the first of the main strengths of the software is the scalability for more productive sectors, in addition to those already covered. The tool, in fact, can be used for any type of company, providing the users with dedicated spreadsheets and backup data depending on the NACE code of the studied company. This is especially true for Section 3.1.3, where the inventories are built depending on the business sectors, with many tertiary or manufacture areas that have dedicated inventory spreadsheets. Dedicated inventories were built, with the aim to target specific sectors, both those with great environmental impact (e.g., pulp and paper or cement in industry, or large-scale retail trade and transportation in tertiary sector), and those which involving many SMEs (e.g., pasta or rubber and plastic production). When compared to existing tools in scientific production, this granularity of information is one of the strengths of the software. In this regard, the wide range of available information, relating to real world observations, provide a trustworthy framework for the tool scoring routine. On the other hand, during the development of the tool, a classical sensitivity analysis was carried out and a great number of tests was completed, but they were in fact limited to each specialised functionality of the tool, with the only aim of cross-checking results.

Another key feature of the tool is the ability to cover the entire process of the energy audit, from reporting energy bills to identifying and analysing EPIAs. This is done on purpose to assist the SMEs in the process of self-evaluation and provide, all in a single tool, a wide range of instruments and data that are usually not accessible to companies. Among these stands the evaluation of cost-effectiveness pertaining the EPIAs, coming from the research work ENEA carries out on data from Italian energy audits and the technical-economic analysis of interventions. Also worthy of note are the inventories dedicated to the various economic sectors, which allow users to have pre-set calculation tables addressing the typical final uses of the sector, and information relating to incentives for energy efficiency interventions.

Another important feature is the voluntary data collection introduced in the tool. In fact, since SMEs are not subject to mandatory audit, energy consumption data for such companies have limited availability. The data collection feature allows ENEA to improve the database including more SMEs and, thus, perfect the analyses performed in the tool based on their characteristics.

Finally, the tool allows users to have an all-around environmental evaluation of the company, thanks to the pre-set CO₂ emissions calculations and thanks to the water section, which gives the company a dedicated set of tables to estimate water consumption, in accordance with the recommendations of the UE Directive 1791/2023.

Environmental evaluations are introduced with the aim to raise awareness among SMEs, contributing to link the energy efficiency dimension with decarbonization strategy. The tool has also been promoted in the Awareness Campaign for SMEs financed by the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security and managed by ENEA, fulfilling its role of Italian Agency for New Technologies, Environment and Sustainable Development.

4.2. Comparison with Other Available Tools

Following, a comparison between ATENEA4SME and the other alternatives listed in this paper.

Based on what is listed in Section 2, some conclusions may be drawn. The four tools performing quantitative assessments on all the studied dimensions (Energy, Economy, Environment) are RETScreen^® (provided by the Government of Canada), Energy Performance Indicator Tool and PEPEx (provided by the government of the U.S.) and ATENEA4SME. The four of them focus on industry and tertiary sectors, thus providing the analyses for all kind of users.

However, Energy Performance Indicator Tool, despite being a quantitative tool, works basically on regression analysis. Its strength is to rely on a large amount of background data in order to provide, based on some input data, an analysis of where the plant is, respect to a benchmark. Thus, its work is to provide insight on the comparison between the plant and the competitors on the same market. The tool also includes the calculation of the energy-related CO₂ emissions, but does not cover, however, the economic aspects of EPIAs, nor the calculation of direct water consumption.

PEPEx is more similar to ATENEA4SME, requiring plant managers to insert some basic inputs, such as monthly electricity and fuels consumption profiles and plant utilizations, as well as primary and secondary energy source for each service (i.e., compressed air, blowers, HVAC, lighting, etc.) or monthly production. It also provides users with pre-calculated scorecards helping to evaluate the energy saving opportunities. Despite being pretty similar to ATHENEA4SME on the energy evaluation side, PEPEx does not provide an insight on the environmental performance.

RETScreen^® instead performs the assessment of the energy performance, the economic analysis of EPIAs and the calculation of water consumption and of CO₂ emissions. RETScreen^® is one of the most complete energy management tools online, since it provides multiple analyses, such as:

• Benchmark Analysis, which allows the user to compare the energy performance of the facility with a benchmark, based on climatic conditions, of expected energy consumption or production of reference facilities. It also includes an assessment of possible improvements, starting from the comparison itself.
• Feasibility Analysis, a five-step standard analysis, based on a wide database of clean energy projects templates and case studies, to evaluate the feasibility of the EPIAs.
• Performance Analysis, to compare the actual energy consumption to the expected one, calculated on the basis of actual weather data.
• Portfolio Analysis, to compare the performance of many facilities belonging to the same firm.

A deeper look at the two tools allows to see the differences. First, RETScreen^® is focused on benchmarking the plant performance according to climatic conditions. ATENEA4SME, instead, allows the user to benchmark the plant with respect to the mean performance of other plants in the same NACE sector: this feature allows to have a better comparison, especially for those activities where the impact on energy performance of the facility due to climatic conditions is not so strong (manufacture in general and most energy intensive sectors in particular). This makes ATENEA4SME more similar to the U.S. Energy Performance Indicator Tool, whereas both tools can rely on a large database. Secondly, while RETScreen^® is not focused on SMEs, ATENEA4SME is tailored to the needs of SMEs, with the aim of making the user more familiar with the energy audit. The process is guided step by step, especially in the inventory section, which allows the user to have a thorough knowledge of their energy consumption. Being tailored on SMES, the tool does not consider the possibility of comparing more facilities: in Italy, in fact, the vast majority of SMEs have just one facility, thus making it pointless to introduce a comparison analysis for more plants.

4.3. Tool Based Audits vs. Professional Audits

Research projects (notably LEAPtoSME) have pointed out the many hurdles most micro and small/medium enterprises encounter when dealing with energy efficiency improvement. A first step enabling company management to acquire knowledge of energy consumption and usage and providing valuable quantitative suggestions regarding energy efficiency improvement actions is offered by a number of software tools. Commercial and scientific tools may differ for the application scope, catering for a limited range of business sectors, and for proposed Energy Efficiency measures. ATENEA4SME depends not only on energy usage entries and company maturity, but is capable of searching in the ENEA dynamically updated audit database in order to propose cost effective energy efficiency solutions. However, tool-based solutions lack the possibility of providing a complete overview of on-site productive activities and of its interactions with procured or produced energy vectors, of introducing intelligence acquired from metering data resulting from a customised on going and developing metering campaign, taking the full complexity of the business process into account. Planning and design of energy efficiency measures may count on tools only in simple applications, while an extensive consultation of BREF and sectorial KPIs, together with specialized literature, is absolutely needed in order to let technical and management solutions emerge and to ascertain their energy and financial returns and feasibility in more complex environments.

ATENEA4SME, in this regard, does not have the aim to replace a professional, while it has the ambition to provide the SME an insight on the actual energy and environmental performance of the facility and a first analysis of the energy saving possibilities.

5. Conclusions

In accordance with Art. 8 paragraph 10 ter Legislative Decree n. 102/2014, the ATENEA4SME tool has been implemented within the context of the SME Awareness Plan. The tool represents one of the instruments that ENEA, in collaboration with the University of Basilicata, has put in place to help companies not required by Art. 8 Legislative Decree 102/2014 to undertake a path dedicated to the efficiency of production sites and to an improvement of all company parameters, from energy to environmental to economic ones [46]. The tool can analyse energy usage and efficiency potential according to the enterprise’s particular business category, whether it belongs to the tertiary or industrial sector. This characteristic makes the tool original and innovative with respect to other currently available online resources as reported in the literature. The consumption and technical-economic analysis of the energy efficiency interventions proposed by ATENEA4SME are based on data from real-world cases (energy audit database). The cost-effectiveness of the interventions varies from sector to sector, ensuring that the accuracy of the analysis is as close as possible to the operational reality of the sector being audited. In fact, depending on the NACE, the tool provides customized results. Moreover, by using the result of a mandatory survey, an original algorithm based on weighted scores has been developed to create an automatic and hierarchical list of suggested areas of interventions. These elements played a major role in the tool’s diffusion campaign, which sought to advertise the tool by demonstrating its applicability to particular economic and productive sectors. It was introduced alongside an online form that allowed users to report issues, offer comments, and get help. The tool has been updated twice in 2023 and several times in 2024 and will continue to be updated to improve its usefulness, following received reports. The tool is characterized by high versatility and possibility for expansion, in particular in the interventions section, by adding new typologies and improving the calculation methodologies. Moreover, from financial and technological standpoints, the tool aids removing barriers to the advancement of energy-saving strategies.

Future development consists of the realization of an online tool that includes the main features of ATENEA4SME and has the possibility to introduce further analysis instruments, for those SMEs who are willing to work with an online tool.