Gestión de Riesgos

Public bodies means in the Commission's Energy Efficiency Directive (2012) ‘contracting authorities’ on the coordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts. A typical case of public bodies are the local/regional authorities. Public bodies have a key role in stimulating, promoting and supporting energy efficiency initiatives. In addition, they can participate in energy efficiency projects as investors, customers or beneficiaries.

With respect to the Business Model Canvas, the role of the public bodies is found on the areas of Customers and Key Partners.

• As Customers, public bodies get in a contract with an ESCO for the implementation of an energy efficiency project. The beneficiary of the project can be either the public body in itself (e.g. when the project refers to buildings that belong or are operated by the public body) or the community (e.g. when acts as a representative of the community). Their goals relate to reducing the cost of energy or attaining certain environmental standards (e.g. reduction of CO2 emissions).

• The public body can have also the role of the Key partner, when they contribute somehow in the energy efficiency project (e.g. infrastructure or property or anything else).

The role of public bodies is largely related to “community energy” or “district energy” schemes, i.e. the production of energy at district level with the objective to meet basically the energy needs of the specific district. Such initiatives have been boosted recently by the opportunities and the

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incentives for renewable energy or the obligation to meet certain environmental standards at community level.

Bertoldi, Hinnells and Rezessy (2006) describe the “community model” for energy services with regard to heating services in local communities. Here ESCOs manage the design, building, financing and operation of “community heating” projects usually, often as a partnership between a private sector company and a local authority, in which the ESCO undertakes the exclusive responsibility for the operation, maintenance and possibly energy supply of a local community area. Local government or social housing schemes can take a lead in the “community model” for energy services, by contracting out all energy infrastructure on a site or region to an ESCO. The authors point out that the “community model” for energy services can be applied in a smaller scale, such as in large new-build housing developments. However, there is relatively little experience with this kind of model, except in social housing.

The benefits of the “community model” are that the ESCO can design and manage the assets to achieve best efficiency performance and least life cycle costs. Energy efficiency projects that scale up at community level can achieve a great impact that outperforms the thresholds set by guidelines and policies. Finally the ESCO can serve as a facilitator in the delivery of a wider spectrum of services within a community (e.g. internet), achieving deeper involvement in the community affairs and improved social responsibility. On the other side, the “community model” may include certain risks, as there is little evidence that people prefer homes that have lower environmental impact or low energy cost, or that they prefer communal solutions, rather than individual ones. In addition, there are some bad experiences and bad reputation with the community model, in case that they are badly maintained. With regard to the economics of the community model, quite often the cost of an upfront investment may be recovered with difficulty. The economics of district energy depend on three main factors (Marinova et al., 2008): the production cost of the energy, the cost of the energy distribution network, which depends on network size and energy loads, the customer connection costs. The economic efficiency depends on also on the prices of competing technologies and the related fuels.

Rezaie and Rosen (2012) describe four categorizations of district energy systems based on the market served and considering usage density:

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• Densely populated urban areas: In densely populated areas, a district energy system can serve a large number of customers for multiple purposes. Such networks are complicated and require significant financial investments.

• High-density building clusters: High-rise residential buildings, institutional buildings, shopping malls or high density mixed suburban developments are in this category.

• Industrial complexes: Having some similarities to the high-density building clusters, the industrial complex thermal requirements (steam, hot water, both) determines the type of the thermal networks and economics.

• Low-density residential areas: The district energy system for this type of area typically serves an area dominated by single or double residential units.

In the E-HUB project (http://www.e-hub.org) the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are proposed also as a kind of business model for energy efficiency projects. The term Public Private Partnership covers several more specified models which partnerships between the public and private sector, in which the private sector partners have the responsibility for at least designing, building, and operating a project-facility. For example, the Design Build Finance Operate (DBFO) model is a form of PPP in which a public sector client acquires (purchases) an asset-based service from a private sector service provider. In a DBFO project, the private sector is responsible for providing a service by means of designing, building, financing and operating the project asset for the contract period, which can be up to four decades. It is expected that the financial incentives used by the client and the increased duration and scope of the private sector involvement will improve the economic efficiency of public procurement. Another example is the FBOOT (Finance, Build, Own, Operate, Transfer). Here a private operator designs, brings in the money, builds, owns and operates the energy supply system for a certain number of years, normally 20 to 25. Investment and operational costs are covered by subscription fees. The private operator undertakes the production of energy and its transfer to end users, buying deficient amounts of it from a state-owned company, tuning and servicing the grid and maintaining the necessary infrastructure. The holder of the network undertakes purchasing excessively produced electricity, heat and cooling energy and affording the necessary reserve facilities for a certain period of time. After the expiration of the term, the holder of the grid becomes the owner of the whole system.

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