Member States shall use the annual final inland energy consumption of all energy users within the scope of this Directive for the most recent five-year period previous to the implementation of this Directive for which official data are available, to calculate an annual average amount of consumption. This final energy consumption shall be the amount of energy distributed or sold to final customers during the five-year period, not adjusted for degree days, structural changes or production changes.
On the basis of this annual average amount of consumption, the national indicative energy savings target shall be calculated once and the resulting absolute amount of energy to be saved applied for the total duration of this Directive.
The national indicative energy savings target shall:
consist of 9 % of the annual average amount of consumption referred to above;
be measured after the ninth year of application of this Directive;
be the result of cumulative annual energy savings achieved throughout the nine-year application period of this Directive;
be reached by way of energy services and other energy efficiency improvement measures.
This methodology for measuring energy savings ensures that the total energy savings prescribed by this Directive are a fixed amount, and thus independent of future GDP growth and of any future increase in energy consumption.
The national indicative energy savings target shall be expressed in absolute terms in GWh, or equivalent, calculated in accordance with Annex II.
Energy savings in a particular year following the entry into force of this Directive that result from energy efficiency improvement measures initiated in a previous year not earlier than 1995 and that have a lasting effect may be taken into account in the calculation of the annual energy savings. In certain cases, where circumstances can justify it, measures initiated before 1995 but not earlier than 1991 may be taken into account. Measures of a technological nature should either have been updated to take account of technological progress, or be assessed in relation to the benchmark for such measures. The Commission shall provide guidelines on how the effect of all such energy efficiency improving measures should be measured or estimated, based, wherever possible, on existing Community legislation, such as Directive 2004/8/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004 on the promotion of cogeneration based on a useful heat demand in the internal energy market(1) and Directive 2002/91/EC.
In all cases, the resulting energy savings must still be verifiable and measurable or estimable, in accordance with the general framework in Annex IV.