​U.S. moves up to No. 8 in international scorecard.

Germany continues to lead the world in energy efficiency, followed by Italy and Japan (tied for second place), France, and the United Kingdom (not reflecting energy-related government changes in 2016), according to the 2016 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard published by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

New to the rankings this year are eight nations:  Indonesia, Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey.

Now in its third edition, the ACEEE report finds that the United States rose in the international rankings from 13th in 2014 to 8th in 2016.

On a scale of 100 possible points in 35 categories, the nations were ranked by ACEEE as follows:  Germany (1), Italy (2, tied), Japan (2, tied), France (4), UK (5), China (6), Spain (7), South Korea (8, tied), United States (8, tied), Canada (10), Netherlands (11), Poland (12), Taiwan (13), India (14), Turkey (15), Australia (16), Russia (17), Indonesia (18), Mexico (19), Thailand (20), South Africa (21), Brazil (22), Saudi Arabia (23).

Together these countries represent 75 percent of all the energy consumed on the planet and over 80 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

The U.S. rank was boosted by high scores in a number of new metrics added to the report for 2016, as well as improvements in energy intensity, or energy use per dollar of GDP. The US also benefited from changes to the scoring methodology, which now allocates more weight to policy actions. The ACEEE report outlines a number of international best practices that the US could implement to improve its score.

ACEEE evaluated each country using 35 policy and performance metrics spread over four categories: buildings, industry, transportation, and overall national energy efficiency efforts. Germany scored the most points in the national efforts, buildings, and industry categories, while India tied with Italy and Japan for first place in transportation.