By Denis Tanguay*

As an economist, and for self-defense purposes, I learned early enough in the profession that the best way to protect oneself against the judgment of others was to learn as many jokes as possible about economics and its methods. If you have two economists in a room, how many opinions will you get? Three. If an economist tortures stubborn numbers long enough, they will inevitably speak.

By Tracy Phillips*

The International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol’s (IPMVP) Core Concepts (2016) Option C, Whole Facility approach is popular. The approach makes sense for larger projects involving multiple measures, usually with interactivity, in which the predicted energy savings are greater than 10% of the building’s total energy use. It also makes sense from the fundamental perspective that building owners and financiers can use utility bills to determine whether energy savings have been realized.

By Rajvant Nijjhar*

The International Standard for Energy Management Systems, or ISO 50001 was first published in July 2011 – and is already being replaced by a 2018 version. This change was necessary to ensure that all management systems standards (MSS) adhere to the same common structure, terminology and approach. After all, ISO is a standards-making body, so there should be standardised approaches to all MSS whether it’s ISO 50001, IS0 140001 for Environmental Systems Standards, or ISO 9001 on Quality management. This is called the High Level Structure (HLS).

By Alex Rathmell*

The Investor Confidence Project (ICP) is an international project to reduce performance risks and due diligence costs through the standardisation of energy efficiency project development.  Under the ICP’s Investor Ready Energy Efficiency (IREE™) system, project developers, who have to be highly qualified and experienced, develop projects following the ICP’s protocols which are then independently reviewed by an ICP Quality Assurance professional.  Projects that receive the IREE certification have followed international, transparent best practice and therefore will have lower performance risk and financial institutions can spend less on due diligence – lenders and investors, as well as CFOs, can have more confidence in the predicted energy and cost savings.  They also have on-going Operations & Maintenance and Measurement & Verification plans, both of which help to maintain savings through the life of the project.  

By Colin Grenville*

This example considers a real project to deliver an energy performance contract across a number of schools using a range of ECMs at each school. Whilst savings at most schools were approximately as expected, one seemed to perform adequately in the first measurement period with savings worsening dramatically in subsequent years. Unfortunately, an absence of detailed monitoring and regular customer dialogue following ECM implementation meant that the underlying issues were not identified until the second year-end reconciliation was calculated.