By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant, Environmental Defense Fund
Nearly 40% of U.S. energy is consumed by both residential and commercial buildings, which emit more than a third of our country’s greenhouse gases. Realizing all of the available cost-effective energy efficiency savings would require roughly $279 billion of investment, resulting in more than $1 trillion in energy savings over ten years.
Environmental Defense Fund’s Investor Confidence Project (ICP) opens up energy efficiency to investment markets by laying the foundation necessary to enable organizations to tap into this vast potential. This means turning energy efficiency upgrades in the commercial building sector into an asset that can be bought and traded, much like stocks and bonds. By developing a straightforward set of protocols that define a clear road-map for upgrades, ICP creates an investment-quality asset class whose risks and returns are transparent. Ultimately, large-scale adoption of the ICP framework will reduce transaction costs and engineering overhead, while increasing the reliability and consistency of savings.
ICP will be hosting a series of webinars targeted at specific stakeholders in the energy efficiency sector, and strongly encourage individuals and organizations interested in the future of the energy efficiency industry to attend. With the assistance and feedback of industry leaders, investors and programs, ICP has developed a range of Energy Performance Protocols tailored to market needs and project types that will reduce transaction costs, manage performance risk and increase deal flow. Our webinar schedule this fall will focus on how these protocols can create value for individual projects, organizations and the energy efficiency industry as a whole.
These webinars include:
ICP and Streamlined Origination: Increasing Deal Flow – November 15th, 2:30pm Eastern / 11:30am Pacific
Who should attend:
Project developers, including energy service companies (ESCOs), engineering firms, consultants and contractors.
What you will learn:
Find out how you can leverage the ICP Energy Performance Protocols to develop investment-quality projects that can be brought to an ecosystem of investors with increased transparency and fewer embedded costs. The ICP framework follows the life cycle of the building’s upgrade from inception through completion to operation, allowing for increased funding for deals as well as more accurately-predicted and measured financial and energy savings. Find out how your firm can use this system to get more projects across the goal line.
Applying ICP’s Energy Performance Protocols: A Detailed Analysis – November 21st, 2:00pm Eastern / 11:00am Pacific
Who should attend:
Facility managers, engineers, project managers and other technical experts.
What you will learn:
Drill down into the specific details of applying the Large and Standard Commercial Protocols to potential energy efficiency projects. The presentation will focus on the process of meeting various requirements contained in the Energy Performance Protocols. ICP’s technical expert, Tracy Phillips, will detail how to successfully implement ICP’s protocols to achieve ICP compliance in the most effective manner.
Leveraging ICP for PACE Programs – Date and time TBD
Who should attend:
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program staff, policy makers, building owners and investors.
What will you learn:
This is a joint webinar hosted by EDF and PACENow. This webinar will provide an overview of ICP and how Commercial PACE (C-PACE) programs are using the ICP framework to apply best practices and increase confidence in projected savings for PACE-financed projects. The webinar will also feature key learnings from the PACE administrators of Connecticut’s C-PACE program, members of the Texas “PACE-in-a-box” program and the leading C-PACE Investor Clean Fund about how they are successfully using ICP protocols in their portfolio.
Sign up to receive an email when registration for this webinar is open.
To learn more about the Investor Confidence Project visit us at EEperformance.org