Novel PDA Methodology to energize Public and Private European Energy Efficiency Projects

Project Information

BundleUP

Grant agreement ID: 785091

DOI

10.3030/785091

Project closed

EC signature date 27 April 2018

Start date 1 May 2018

End date 30 April 2021

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 999 437,50

EU contribution

€ 999 437,50

Coordinated by

POWER PARITY S.A.
Portugal

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BundleUP (Novel PDA Methodology to energize Public and Private European Energy Efficiency Projects)

Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2021-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Energy efficiency (EE) is key to the achievement of Europe’s energy and climate goals. While significant development has been made in large projects (typically over 2M€) such as public LED lighting, large self-consumption or energy performance contracting (EPC), there is huge potential in smaller-sized projects that present positive environmental impact and attractive business opportunities but fail to attract large investor due to their lack of scale, a barrier that becomes even more significant in the public sector, due the bureaucracy involved in their implementation (e.g. public procurement processes).
BundleUP applied a novel methodology that supports the whole development chain – from the identification of opportunities to the actual project deployment – by providing support to technical project development, matching projects with the adequate financing schemes and business models and supporting the development of procurement, tendering and contracting procedures.
The project partners were able to successfully support the implementation of 44M€ on 62 sustainable energy projects in the public and private sectors (public lighting, building renovation and solar PV systems for self-consumption).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project, the consortium has focused on the technical development of projects, the identification of public and private funding sources, the development of standard procedures for contracting and tendering as well as on the support to the launching of tenders and funding applications on the public sector, which included:
- Support to the development of sustainable energy projects up to investment ready stage
- Development of standard energy efficiency procurement and contracting templates (EPC tender, EPC contract, Solar PV tender, Solar PV contract);
- Analysis of the applicability of crowdfunding to projects in the Public sector;
- Implementation of 44M€ of public and private projects
- National (Portuguese) and EU replication events, with sharing of best practices, policy recomendations and a Final Report with lessons learnt and use cases.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The most impactful progress beyond stat-of-the-art was the collective financing of projects in bundles, as well as the capacity to finance several small-scale private sector projects through crowdlending. The project reached significant impact and meaningful conclusions.
On the one hand the development of standardized procedures, made available by request, has brought transparency to the public procurement process as Municipalities now have a strictly unbiased template to be used for their projects, and legal support directly to the technical and legal departments of municipalities increased confidence in EPC contracts.
On the other hand, it is clear that Municipalities can leverage on their EE potential by making use of PDA support services in a scale that is not available to them otherwise.
Also, and very importantly, the consortium has come to the conclusion that, in addition to the bundling of projects, matching each individual project with the adequate funding scheme and business model is also key for their implementation. In other words, the consortium has concluded that for almost every project there is one business model and funding scheme that makes it viable, making matchmaking key to project success, thus making bundling only one of the options for funding - others, such as crowdledning, and overall EPC contracts with ESCOs are strong enablers for projects with diferent scales, from the few thousand euros to several million.

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