Energy Performance Contracting Plus (EPC+)

Description

The EPC+ project´s ambitious aim was to promote the implementation of Energy Performance
Contracting (EPC) in Small to Medium-sized enterprises (SME) of the private sector; a sector
which has not experienced significant success in these sort of contracting and financing
schemes, unlike the public sector in many of the EU countries which seems to have embraced
such. The main reasons for this limited success include the facts that; the transaction costs
for procuring these energy services and for preparing the complex EPC contracts are too high
for Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) and that the project sizes, and therefore budgets and
paybacks, are usually too small and this inevitably makes financing for such projects very
difficult.

The EPC+ project team, based on their experiences with EPC in each of their countries, has
therefore developed a common business model (the EPC+ model) which could overcome
these barriers. This included: the development and establishment of SME Partnerships for the
provision of these energy services (SPINs), the elaboration of standardized energy performance
measures with simplified measurement and verification procedures and the elaboration of
simplified EPC model contracts and financing solutions.
The EPC+ project, during its 3-year duration, has managed to establish 18 SPINs in the partner
countries, which are expected to implement more than 25 pilot projects with a total investment
of more than 3.3 million Euros, with annual energy savings of electricity 2.4 GWh and thermal
energy savings 6.7 GWh.

Results

The EPC+ project, during its 3-year duration, has managed to establish 18 SPINs in the partner
countries, which were expected to implement more than 25 pilot projects with a total investment
of more than 3.3 million Euros, with annual energy savings of electricity 2.4 GWh and thermal
energy savings 6.7 GWh.

Project materials