Get Energy Star Performance Contracting Best Practices

What is Benchmarking? The first step to saving energy at your building is to benchmark — that is, to measure and compare your building's energy to similar buildings, past consumption, or a reference performance level. Benchmarking turns the information on your utility bill into knowledge you can act on.

Energy service companies (ESCOs) deliver energy efficiency projects that are financed based on energy savings. Given the need to rapidly and significantly increase financing for energy efficiency, interest in ESCO business models is growing.

Energy service companies (ESCOs) develop, design, build, and arrange financing for projects that save energy, reduce energy costs, and decrease operations and maintenance costs at their customers' facilities.

An ESCO may finance the capital for a project such as a combined heat and power (CHP) system, boiler, chiller, etc. Over the 5, 10 or 15 year period, the ESCO will receive revenue from the energy savings achieved.

What is the difference between an ESCO and an EPC? The ESCO is the company providing the energy efficiency services and measures, while the EPC is the contract between the ESCO and the customer. While an Energy Service Company is a great choice for a facility, it does have its drawbacks.

It is expressed on an easy-to-understand 1 to 100 scale, where the higher the score, the better the energy performance of the building. It'll help you identify which buildings in your portfolio to target for improvement or recognition. A score of 50 is the median. Lower is worse than average; higher is better.

Performance contracting is like the design-build construction procurement model. One firm, usually an Energy Services Company (ESCO), is solely accountable for the project. ESCOs are responsible for project design, engineering, and project management.