Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EnerSHIFT (Energy Social Housing Innovative Financing Tender)

Teaser

The main aim of the EnerSHIFT project is the preparation of a 15 million € energy retrofit investment portfolio in the public Social Housing sector of Liguria (Italy) by promoting and applying innovative financing models and the launch of a tender for investments to be...

Summary

The main aim of the EnerSHIFT project is the preparation of a 15 million € energy retrofit investment portfolio in the public Social Housing sector of Liguria (Italy) by promoting and applying innovative financing models and the launch of a tender for investments to be awarded to ESCos through EPC contracts (Energy Performance Contracts).
Investments in energy efficiency raised during the life of EnerSHIFT (February 2016 – January 2019) will contribute to boost local economy, to improve the quality of life of low income tenants despite the shortage of public funds and to support the regional energy efficiency policies by triggering energy savings of 14,5 GWh/year, equal to 4.000 fewer tonnes of CO2 emissions.

EnerSHIFT challenges and goals:
•Implementing sustainable EE initiatives involving private capitals and offering advanced energy services, thus challenging the general shortage of public resources for SHB energy retrofit which affects many EU Countries;
•Implementing the “triple win approach”, which foresees an equitable sharing of benefits among tenants, building owners and ESCOs;
•Promoting replicable technical and financial schemes to foster the implementation of energy retrofit initiatives for the energy retrofit of SH buildings at mass scale level;
•Awareness rising and engaging of citizens suffering from energy poverty;
•Fostering cooperation between ESCos and banks thanks to the application of: innovative financing schemes lowering the financial risk of such operations, European standards aimed to certify the technical and economic reliability of the energy retrofit projects, synergies among public funds supporting the economic feasibility of EE interventions;
•Setting up steady national networks and a regional permanent working group about the themes of innovative financing for energy efficiency.

Work performed

At the beginning of the project the staff of the 4 Ligurian Social Housing Operators (named ARTE) received training by the regional energy Agency (IRE spa) aimed to the implementation of energy audits of over 100 SH buildings served by around 50 centralized heating plants.
In the same period, the 3 most representative Tenants’ Unions of the territory (SUNIA, SICER and UNIAT) actively engaged the tenants (around 3.500 families) regard to acceptance issues: in fact, EnerSHIFT is the first EU project involving Tenants’ Unions as official partners.
In the meanwhile the Urban Development Project Office of Liguria Regional Authority, project coordinator, promoted an amendment to the Regional Law managing the Social Housing sector (n. 10/2004) aimed to overcome the existing barriers to the implementation of EPC contracts on SH buildings. Indeed, at national level a formal approval of the tenants is required, which is a severe constraint to EPC implementation. The proposal was evaluated by the Regional Landing and Environmental Commission and was then approved by the Regional Council on December 2016 with broad consensus. This is an important and unexpected result for the project in the aim of replication. To the same purposes, on January 2017 the Region of Liguria established a Permanent Task Force on innovative financing.

At technical level, a global inventory of the SH buildings was realized which includes energy performances, consumptions and cost indicators, followed by the aggregated and consolidated energy baseline on which to set the EPC contract.
Later, the 4 SHOs identified a range of energy retrofit interventions which were elaborated through a common technical and economic methodological framework in order to design a multi-setting investments and savings plan aimed to secure the overall sustainability of the tender and to provide an equitable sharing of benefits among tenants, building owners and ESCOs (“Triple win-approach”).
From the legal side Liguria Region, supported by the regional procurement office analysed the national regulatory framework in order to identify the most suitable legal scheme for the implementation of the EPC call for tender: indeed, the EPC contractual model with third party financing finds no specific discipline under the Italian Public Procurement Code, therefore it was necessary to assimilate it within one of the PPP models (Public Private Partnership) regulated by the Code.
Due to the innovation of the EnerSHIFT initiative, the definition of both the financial and the legal engineering of the tender turned out to be very challenging for the partners, who needed to rework solutions several times over and to face multiple barriers affecting the implementation of EPC contracts at national and European level.
The process was influenced by a long uncertainty, which lasted till April 2017, about the possibility to use an amount of 5 million € of ERDF funds to implement energy efficiency complimentary interventions within the framework of the EPC call for tender.

Despite the hard work of the partners (proactively supported by several national stakeholders through the EnerSHIFT stakeholder platform), no solutions were found to implement fund-synergies in this way; as a consequence, the Consortium needed to change anew its tender implementation strategy, which was split in two separate procedures: the EPC tender for investments from one side and the ERDF-funded procurements from the other.

The elaboration of a new financial and legal scheme requested extra time and effort to the partners but, following a tight-time schedule, the Consortium was able to finalize all the tender documents in a 3 months time, and the EPC call for tender was launched on August 2017.
Tender documents elaborated by the partners are available here and consists on Tender Notice, Technical Specifications and EPC reference scheme and monitoring plan.
In details, the call for tender is a Public Service Concessio

Final results

At national level the EnerSHIFT tender is the first EPC for Social Housing buildings to be tendered
Moreover it is also the very first procedure since the new Public Procurement Code entered into force in 2017

At regional level an amendment to the Regional Law managing the SH sector (n. 10/2004) was approved by the Regional Council on December 2016, wich allowes to overcome the existing barriers to the EPC contracts implementation on SH buildings
In Italy only two regions so far promulged similar initiatives (Liguria and Emilia Romagna)

Website & more info

More info: http://www.enershift.eu.