Quality assurance instruments (QAI) for energy services

Energy services are individual packages of construction, planning, financing, energy supply etc. where one service provider covers all aspects relevant for the client.

The client can outsource certain complications (many suppliers etc.) and risks (fi- nancing etc.) to the service provider, who in turn provides a pre-defined result (en- ergy savings, energy supply etc.) for a pre-defined price. Up to now, energy ser- vices could not develop their full market potential. This is partly due to a kind of reserved client attitude: Clients do not trust fully the new services, and are re- strained by certain other barriers. The idea of this manual is to present instruments that convey the outstanding quality of energy services to the client, so that the ser- vices continually gain more and more confidence at the market.

We present 21 Quality Assurance Instruments (QAI): 13 QAI, which are already used in certain energy service projects, accompanied by 4 QAI from related branches (construction, facility management) and 4 QAI from other service branches (mobility, tourism etc.). For better comparability, we describe every in- strument in a standardised way. We evaluate their benefits and efforts connected to their verification from the client’s perspective, as well as the efforts and risks on the ESCO side associated with them. Our evaluation shows that there are several in- struments that provide benefits to both sides: They add security for most of the clients, are easy to verify and can even relieve ESCO-s’ efforts and risks. There are mandatory guarantee elements without which energy services are not viable; be- side these, there are additional guarantee elements, contractual and communica- tion instruments which can add value to an energy services project.

As we did not want to do only our own evaluation we asked a defined target group about QAI, their application and their verification. We interviewed 42 persons and present their answers and remarks in this section of the manual.

In our guidelines for implementation, we show the relevance of each individual QAI for the four main target groups of energy services projects: Public building owners, Large private real estate companies with rented out buildings, large companies with owner occupied buildings, and small companies with owner occupied buildings. In addition, we show possible problems or fears the individual QAI can be a response to. With the help of these descriptions, an appropriate package of QAI can be de- fined to every energy services project, tailor made to the clients’ needs.

At the end of our report, we present text blocks from existing contracts as concrete examples how the above instruments can be formulated in energy service con- tracts.