IMPACT OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENTS ON ENVIRONMENT

Energy security is a critical consideration for Albania because the electricity production relies on hydropower 100% on 2013. While renewable energy resources like hydropower play a fundamental role in moving the world towards a low-carbon economy, these are vulnerable to changing climatic conditions. Annual precipitation variability already a?ects Albania’s energy production to a considerable extent and climate change may bring further challenges. Energy e?ciency and renewable energy deployment have the potential to bring benefits to consumers, reduce emissions and makes an immediate contribution to security of supply. The paper aims to show that the reactive power compensation and use of variable speed drives to control speed bring improvements in energy efficiency of electric drives. The energy efficiency of electric drives has influence on their work, consumption and paying of electric energy, reduction of green gasses, the working life etc. The technical results show that the additional investments to increase the power factor until 0.9 and efficiency of electric drives will bring the reduction of energy consumption from 20% up to 37% and reduction of CO2 emission are expected. The investment payback time will be up to 3 years which do it very profitable. The findings of the study are in accordance with the policy of the Albanian government which identifies the energy savings as the most cost-effective way to increase security of supply with electrical energy and to reduce import dependency. The study is based on European Directive 2006/32/EC adopted in National Energy Efficiency Action Plan for 2011-2018.