Workshop Report – Dublin, 1st February 2016
An Investor Confidence Project (ICP) Europe workshop in Ireland was held in Dublin on 1st February 2016, hosted by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) and facilitated by Fiona Tutty of ZESCO. Leading actors across the Irish energy efficiency market discussed how the emerging ICP best practice approach to project development could benefit Irish providers of finance and energy management services. The event was very well attended, with more than 50 representatives from a range of backgrounds including the financial sector, local authority/government bodies, industry bodies, ESCOs, energy supply sector, and consulting organisations.
Majella Kelleher, Head of Energy Demand Management at SEAI, welcomed the attendees and provided a brief introduction to energy efficiency in Ireland. Dave Worthington, Managing Director of Verco and member of the ICP Europe technical team then summarised ICP’s mission and the specific issues that it seeks to address. Dave outlined the structure of the protocols, the process to achieving Investor Ready Energy EfficiencyTM certification and highlighted the progress made with over 100 allies signed up, and more than 150 members on the Technical Forum. He described a number of pilot projects and programmes across Europe that are adopting the ICP process and documentation, and case studies on the first projects to achieve certification in the US.
Participants discussed how a standardised approach would be of benefit to their organisations, and whether there were any unique barriers that might need to be overcome in Ireland. Feedback provided some useful insight into the local energy efficiency market and the need for key benefits of the ICP approach including the ability to transfer risks associated with this type of projects, managing energy price volatility, and dealing with under performance of measures. Some of the specific barriers identified within Ireland included a lack of scale and energy intensity, an inflexible grid, split incentives, and an intolerance of longer paybacks on projects.
Bethan Phillips, also from the ICP Europe technical team, went into the detail of the ICP documentation, highlighting what it does and does not do, how to select the appropriate protocol for a project, and the requirements at each stage of the process. A productive second workshop session was held to review some of the Irish standards and resources already identified, and to try to identify additional resources.
The event concluded with strong confirmation from attendees of an interest in ongoing engagement with ICP and an open invitation to participate in any of the following activities:
The event concluded with strong confirmation from attendees of an interest in ongoing engagement with ICP and an open invitation to participate in any of the following activities:
- Ally network covering a wide range of over 100 energy efficiency companies, financial institutions, government agencies and NGOs: http://europe.eeperformance.org/join-icp-europe.html (this is free to join and allows any company interested in supporting ICP to submit their logo and company description for inclusion on the project website. Organisations signed-up as allies also receive news updates and information on forthcoming training events.
- Technical forum with over 150 members from countries across Europe covering all parts of the energy-efficiency market providing feedback on the suite of documents and tools to ensure their fully respond to local market needs: http://europe.eeperformance.org/technical-forum.html
- Consider potential pilot projects or programmes which would benefit from trialing the ICP process and tools (funded technical assistance may be available. Please contact Dave Worthington at dave.worthington@vercoglobal.com if you would like to discuss this further).
- Establishment of an Irish working group to progress the adoption of the ICP process in the local market (please contact Fiona Tutty at fiona@zesco.ie if you are interested in this)
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