At the beginning of the guarantEE project the current state of the European EPC market and the needs for performance-based ESCO projects has been assessed. Based on those results and the experience of EPC project facilitators, innovative business and financing models for performance-based ESCO projects have been developed. With a special focus on building owners in the private sector, EPC contract variants providing enhanced flexibility have been set up.
The energy service models were to be tested in pilot projects, in which the building owners received support from experienced EPC facilitators. The role of the EPC facilitator is to act as a mediator between the client and the ESCO and to manage the project from the early stages of its development right through to the project conclusion. EPC facilitators give substantiated and reliable information to building owners, helping them to understand the possibilities, benefits and risks of EPC and thus paving the way for energy-efficiency projects to be undertaken.
36 pilot projects have been tendered, evaluated with questionnaires and summarized in a report which is available on the project website. The best practice database on the guarantEE website now contains 115 examples.
An EPC pre-check tool was developed and launched which is available in 13 languages. With the tool it is possible to find out if a project or building is suitable for EPC contracting, not in a business case way, but by checking if the organization is ready to outsource energy and maintenance services to a third party. The tool has been used 3,644 times in Europe during the project period and is also used by the Ministry of Slovakia, EnergieAgentur.NRW and the Swedish County Administrative Board for the Interreg project Effect4Buildings.
Quality criteria and training activities for facilitator pools have been set up. An EPC facilitation report has been published that examines the role EPC facilitators have had on the development of the EPC market in the partner countries. Also a policy recommendations report has been compiled and shared with European stakeholders.
The dissemination activities of the guarantEE project included the development of a corporate design, a website in English with 14 national subsites, the use of social media, newsletters, press releases, presentations and EPC stakeholder events. The first EESA ceremony within the guarantEE project took place in Berlin on 31 May 2017 and the second EESA ceremony took place on 20 February 2019 in the framework of the Covenant of Mayors Investment Forum – Energy Efficiency Finance Market Place.
Overview of the results
• Publication of
o an EPC market report
o a brochure with business models
o EPC contract variants and model processes
o an online EPC pre-check tool
o quality criteria for facilitator pools
o training modules on new EPC related topics
• Training activities for project facilitators have been provided with
o an European facilitator workshop
o EPC information days with overall 856 participants
o facilitator trainings with 586 participants
o webinars with overall at least 286 participants (not all could be monitored)
• 49 EPC facilitators are registered for the network guarantEEforum
• Published tenders of 36 and evaluation reports of 46 pilot projects
• 86 new projects in best practice database
• Publication of a pilot project, an EPC facilitation, and a policy recommendations report
• Project website with 14 national subsites
• Twitter social media presence with 826 tweets reaching more than 70,000 followers
• 79 online newsletters
• 67 press releases reaching more than 5,500 journalists leading to 259 media coverings
• Presentations of the guarantEE project at 97 conferences or seminars, reaching more than 5,000 participants
• 20 EPC stakeholder events reaching about 6,000 participants
• 2 EESA ceremonies
