How Province of Flemish Brabant successfully developed the local EPC-market
07. 03. 2016
Since 2010, the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant supported the realization of energy savings by its municipalities via conventional energy audit and energy management programs. Confirming observations by many public authorities in other member states, the decision makers of the province concluded in 2013 that in reality this conventional approach generated almost no energy saving results. It was decided to create a Helpdesk Energy Management to take the role of EPC market facilitator and to develop EPC projects for the municipal building stocks. As the municipalities do not have a long term action plan and the required financial resources to implement energy efficiency measures, the province coaches municipalities towards energy performance contracting.
Tie Roefs, Vice-governor of Province of Flemish Brabant "Via an innovative EPC coaching trajectory, the province successfully guided six municipalities towards the implementation of an EPC-project. Nine new municipalities recently subscribed for our second trajectory."
Supported by the EPC- and change management experts of EY and Factor4, the officials of the province started with a careful analysis of the successes and failures of previous EPC-development tracks in Belgium and abroad. Based on this analysis, and making use of modern change management and communication techniques, the province launched an innovative EPC coaching trajectory composed out of 4 steps.
In the first step, municipalities followed an EPC-training. Before being allowed to the next step, they had to sign a Letter of Intent engaging them to actively participate in the rest of the process. If they would drop out, lack participation, or just drop out of the process, they are obliged to realize a concrete energy savings target through an energy management action plan
Next, experts of the Helpdesk Energy Management of the province executed an EPC-pre-feasibility study for the municipal buildings, including collection of basic building data (energy consumption, technical condition of the building, ...) and inventory of possible energy saving measures. All the necessary data were collected by the municipalities themselves, and transferred in data sheets provided by the helpdesk. After the data collection and pre-feasibility, other strategic aspects are discussed with the municipality to develop a tailor made building master plan (demographic trends and needs, multiple use and concersion of existing buildings, occupation level).
The conclusions are discussed in an interactive workshop with the EPC-experts and municipal stakeholders. In parallel, in order to also convince the technical staff, the experts conducted 3 'spot advices' (a walk-trough audit with the building manager) to show the energy and non-energy saving potential that hasn't been taken care of, and talk about their jobs. Confronted with potentials, most of the building managers admit to be aware of the potentials, but regret having not enough time to handle all of these small and big projects. The combination of the pre-feasibility workshop and spot advices resulted in an EPC-pre-feasibility report approved by all the officials as well as by the politicians.
The major objective of this phase was nor 'technical' or 'theoretical', but rather 'psychological', responding to 'what's in it for me?' for every stakeholder.
In the third step, all the stakeholders of at least 3 municipalities (i.e. the Mayor, deputy mayors, technical and environmental team) participated in a 'JAM-session' where, after a short recapitulation of the basics of EPC, they were divided in 3 parallel workshops: financial, operational and juridical. This allowed everyone to ask more and more complex questions about their expertise to an expert specialized in this aspect of EPC. The workshops ended with a networking lunch enabling the politicians, officials and experts to connect more informally and to increase trust of all stakeholders furthermore.
During interactive 'JAM-sessions', EPC-experts answered the last remaining questions of the municipal officials
Based on the conclusions of the prefeasibility report and the 'JAM-session', the municipality agrees on the scope of the EPC-project and the assignment of an EPC-facilitator.
In the last step of the EPC coaching trajectory the municipalities procured an EPC-facilitator using procurement documents developed by the province in collaboration with EPC-experts.
The first EPC trajectory was a big success. Of the eight municipalities that started the program six (75%) will go for EPC. This is a big success as previous experiences with local EPC-development programs based on a more conventional approach (e.g. classic workshops, informative meetings etc.) showed that only 10-20% of the municipalities would go for EPC.
The success of the first trajectory motivated nine new municipalities to subscribe for the recently launched trajectory in 2016.
