by Brianna Crandall — July 3, 2015—With a global economic recovery underway and commercial building owners once again taking a close look at deep retrofit opportunities, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International has just announced the release of an update to its groundbreaking BOMA Energy Performance Contracting (BEPC) Model to reflect new and emerging best practices.
The BEPC Model was created in 2008 by BOMA International in partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and in collaboration with major real estate companies and energy service companies (ESCOs) to help owners and operators increase asset value, improve operational efficiency and demonstrate to tenants a commitment to sustainability.
Designed to offer a starting point for navigating through the complexities of an energy performance contract, BEPC provides a conceptual framework and supporting template documents to help private building owners and operators develop and execute investment-grade energy efficiency retrofits to enhance asset value.
In addition to simplifying energy efficiency investments, the model also is designed to provide transparency on pricing and performance expectations and to give building owners a high degree of confidence that the projects they start will meet the stated goals. The BEPC Model works with all possible funding sources, including property-assessed clean energy (PACE) programs, funding provided through an ESCO or third party, and self-financing.
The updated BEPC Model incorporates lessons learned from projects that have been implemented using BEPC or similar models and changes in the energy retrofit industry since BEPC first was launched. Since its initial launch, BEPC has been used to facilitate projects in more than 20 cities across five different continents.
In addition, the new BEPC toolkit provides a more robust collection of template documents to aid with service provider selection, bidding and project development, as well as an industry-vetted service contract. These customizable template documents are both negotiable and easy to use, says BOMA. If a building owner prefers to use his or her own standard contract, the BEPC language, principles and exhibits can be easily integrated into it.
For more information, visit the BOMA Energy Performance Contracting (BEPC) Model site.
