Save your bUildiNg by SavINg Energy – towards 202020 m2 of deeply renovated multifamily residential buildings
Deep renovation – the idea of capturing the full economic energy efficiency potential of existing buildings with focus on building envelopes – leads to remarkable energy savings. As nearly all of Latvia’s stock of multifamily residential buildings continues to rapidly deteriorate due to harsh weather conditions and lack of proper maintenance, the idea is attractive. Realizing this potential requires designing, financing and implementing complex energy efficiency investments, but today nearly all apartments in Latvia are privately owned.
Practice shows that individual owners are inadequately organized to manage their collective property. Combined with a lack of awareness and technical knowledge, limited availability of funding, high risk perception and reluctance for debt financing, the barriers overwhelm most people. A concept that addresses these constraints is Energy Performance Contracting (EPC).
A key feature of EPC is that the provider, an energy service company (ESCO), guarantees energy savings.
SUNShINE supports public and private ESCO's and leads to an innovative investment scheme, guaranteed and deeply renovated buildings
A major objective is to demonstrate the financial viability of deep renovation via suitable financial engineering of public funds and private capitals. The proposed approach is simple, yet very innovative: most ESCOs have limited balance sheet capacity and are not able to support much long term debt.
So re-financing may be achieved by selling future cash flow (receivables) through a forfaiting transaction. After this transaction, the ESCO continues to guarantee long term energy savings. Unfortunately, in emerging EPC markets like Latvia's, there is no track record, so banks are not yet ready to offer these services to ESCOs. The project delivers the same service by establishing a special purpose fund for EPC.
