By Tim Stoate, VP of Impact Investing at TAF and Matt Zipchen, President of Efficiency Capital
New York City’s new law limiting carbon emissions in large buildings and an innovative passive house retrofit in Hamilton both highlight the crucial role the building sector has to play tackling climate change. It’s also a prime opportunity, given 44 per cent of our region’s carbon emissions now come from buildings.
TAF and Efficiency Capital are helping building owners seize this opportunity by making it easy to improve energy efficiency and building performance without spending any money upfront.
The rationale for a retrofit is clear. Significant amounts of energy are wasted in large buildings – condos, co-ops, apartments, institutions, and commercial buildings. Cut the waste and you save on energy bills, repairs and maintenance, while increasing your asset value and creating a more comfortable living environment.
Since the upfront cost of a retrofit can be a barrier, we’ve created a custom-designed tool called the Energy Savings Performance Agreement™, or ESPA™, that eliminates that upfront cost. Efficiency Capital holds the exclusive license for this innovative performance contracting tool. We pay for the energy upgrade and building owners repay us through the utility bill savings created by the performance improvements. We take the performance risk – our contract protects the customer from paying if predicted reductions in energy volumes do not materialize. After the energy upgrade, the owner’s payments only come from energy savings. And once the ESPATM ends, usually after 8-10 years, the owner keeps all the energy savings from a better performing building.
The ESPATM is not a loan – it’s our investment in your building. Building owners entering into an ESPATM have no upfront equipment or installation costs, they don’t incur debt and equipment costs do not appear on their balance sheet. Even large-scale and complex building upgrades that include new lights, boilers, controls, water fixtures, and appliances do not cost the owner any upfront money. This unique approach to performance contracting combines energy conservation measures and integrated design with ongoing monitoring and maintenance to drive utility costs down right away.
An energy upgrade with an ESPATM is a profitable, no-risk turnkey solution to tackling the big problem of climate change. Spread the news!
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