The first step is to make the pilot project successful. Based on the learning, the methodology and tools should be refined and standardized to enable an efficient scale-up of the project.
The structure and team has also to gain in maturity in order to support the growth in the number of projects to handle. Having a dedicated operational team working in a so-called ‘programme-delivery-unit’ is key. Final clients don’t have neither expertise nor the time to launch pre-study to quantify potential savings and investments.
However the “individual” learning curve remains usually slow and is only one part of the story. In the absence of a dedicated reference framework, which can support all the actors of the value chain, most of the already well-identified barriers have to be first directly (re-) experienced by each newcomer (and to a certain extent by each sector) before being able to consider scaling-up. However, transaction costs will be lowered to a certain extent as a standardization process could appear (framework contracts being developed as well as the standardization of the monitoring part via measurement and verification protocols).
Often, a snowball effect is created when a first set of piloting activities fostered a track record of results that can convince other building owners (perhaps in other sectors) and investors to step in because of an increased trust. Many of the CITYnvest case studies are currently in the phase of scaling-up the pipeline of energy efficiency projects. Read about them here.
Aside from the financial capacity, one of the key bottleneck limiting the EPC take-off in Europe is indeed related to the possibility to apprehend in a clear, user adapted, transparent, coherent and constantly updated way all the information, assumptions and risks embedded in an EPC process. While ESCO companies have usually developed their own assessment and management tools, the client is usually not equipped to deal with this challenge. Given the complexity at stake, the client calls then a facilitator which is in most cases also constrained either to select its own tools and/or to develop them (usually using generic software such as Excel). However, it is possible that facilitators do not have access either to statistically meaningful reference databases limiting thereby the possibility of effective initial benchmarking.
The previous elements can translate into the following major obstacles to scaling-up:
- High costs and limited coherence of technical studies supporting reliable and multi-annual retrofit business models
- Time waste in the decision and implementation stages by limited tangible energy measures and scenarios assessment capacity
- Operational malfunction due to un-harmonized standardized practices and dialog trough the manifold stakeholders chain (especially between the tandem Owner-ESCO[1])
- Lack of consistent and updated data to adequately support the large-scale decision and implementation stages
- Poor risk assessment and mitigation capacity from the beginning till the monitoring, leading to a significant gap between expectations and actual performances
Those barriers emphasize the need for developing a consistent reference (IT supported) methodology for the growing uptake of EPC in in Europe, based on a harmonization and a higher integration level of the best practices consolidation and accessibility to the decision and expert chain.
Although some valuable tools are available on the market, this technical integration and harmonization (IT supported) framework does currently not exist and still needs to be developed. We need to pay a particular attention to make this framework both complete and flexible so that it can be used for all types of buildings (size, utility, type of ownership, etc.) and in all sectors. It should in particular support an efficient grouping (bundle) of buildings, a flexible approach to risk sharing, a capacity to support multiple EPC cycles for a specific building and a possibility of effective and up-to-date benchmarking. Each of those points is briefly described here below:
- As explained in the FAQ on 'how to efficiently bundle', the bundling of buildings offers a first possibility of major scaling-up. If properly capacitated, the owner can group several buildings into one contract or a facilitator can play that role and group several buildings belonging to different owners into a single contract providing a baseline efficiency potential. The use of a common framework to identify and categorize buildings would support a constant interaction between the buildings selection and pooling processes and would avoid unnecessary duplication of expensive preliminary technical studies.
- Thanks to the fundamental support of ISO 50001 EMS procedures, various risk transfer schemes can be implemented: from a full transfer of risk to the ESCO to a mix scheme where only partial elements of a given boundary are given to an ESCO under a limited liability EPC. The availability of reference methodologies and tools which allow stakeholders to internally develop their Energy Conservation Measures (ECM), either totally or partially, provides an essential flexibility which better takes into consideration the constraints and needs of buildings owners. The capacity to test various scenario at the outset of the EMS plan must thus be ensured to provide the flexibility which allows owners to envision their Deep Renovation Strategy without being obliged to consider from the initial stages the final contractual approach for any or all ECMs.
- Scaling-up is not only related to the question of extension of the geographical or sectorial coverage, it is also related to the capacity to reach the EU 60% energy performance improvement target. Due to the investments at stake and a number of other constraints, this objective can usually not be met in one renovation cycle but requests usually several cycles. Scaling-up requires a framework which aims thus also at supporting the several stages over a longer (typically 10/12 years) life cycle of the building renovation process.
- A key lesson learnt by projects implemented to date and funded by the European Commission is that the technical phases are absolutely crucial and that it is essential to have access to reliable databases allowing early benchmarking between buildings, reliable data on energy efficiency and operational costs and basic knowledge on energy efficiency. Actions are thus needed in order to identify/develop and maintain the reference databases necessary to use common valuers between projects Those are also a pre-condition to the possibility of benchmarking between buildings: the creation of a consolidated database based on diversified EU datasets that will be progressively enriched, checked, harmonized during and after the project’s experience would serve new end-users to quickly benchmark their own retrofit building pool dataset to this unique reference and could therefore also contribute to the scaling-up.
This existence and use of this technical and harmonization framework is a major driver for scaling-up. Pending its development, in an intermediary phase, it is nevertheless possible to use existing resources to address the above mentioned 4 key requirements. This requires also an important investment in training and support facilities, which are best apprehended by a “one stop shop” policy at regional/national levels together with the setting-up of a structural collaboration between European major knowledge centres.
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