EPC pilot project starting up in Hedmark
Hedmark County council is the Norwegian partner in the EFFECT4buildings project, aiming to contribute to the implementation of energy saving measures in public buildings. The wish is to achieve this quickly, profitable and with little risk for the building owners. Hedmark County Council has the main responsibility improving the self-financing contract of guaranteed energy savings, also known as the EPC (Energy Performance Contracting).
One of the methods used to further develop the EPC model is to gather experience and information from previous EPC projects. Here you will find experiences about success criteria and challenges from municipalities in Hedmark county, as well as previously completed projects from some of the other partners in EFFECT4buildings. As of today, interviews have been conducted with 5 case municipalities in Hedmark. Collection of experience with EPC from other partners has been started. We will also collaborate with one or two municipalities that will assess EPC as a model for energy saving in their municipality.
In addition to this, we will have an ongoing project in our own county. The EPC project, which has recently been initiated by the County Council of Hedmark, will be used as a pilot project in EFFECT4buildings.
In order to find development potentials for the different phases of the model, a market conference was conducted in October 2018. We invited five experienced EPC providers/ESCOs (energy service companies), operating in the EPC market in Norway, four of whom attended the conference. The ESCOs were invited to give their input based on previous EPC projects, including any suggested improvements to the EPC model compared to how it has been implemented in Norway in the last 8-10 years.
Practically this was accomplished by publishing a draft tender for an EPC project at the Norwegian official tender database Doffin and inviting market actors to the market conference. The conference itself was used to provide input to the tender with emphasis on the initial stages of an EPC project – tender design and startup as well as building analyzes. Topics discussed with the ESCOs were: The role of the EPC facilitator, award criteria, energy prices, calculation rate, formula for net present value calculation, repayment time, the builder’s internal resources and baseline. These inputs have been used in revised tender, which are scheduled to be published in December 2018. The tender will include the analysis phase. Then a contract for the implementation and guarantee phase will depend on a positive political decision.
Author: Kjell Vaagen, Hedmark County council
