What is an ESCO?
Energy Service Company (ESCO) refers to a juridical entity that offers multi-technology services and goods towards developing and designing energy efficiency projects, delivering and guaranteeing energy savings, and ensuring cost-effective and optimal performance. Their services include energy supply and management, energy financing, technical engineering expertise and consultancy, equipment supply, installation, operation, maintenance, and upgrade, and monitoring and verification of performance and savings. Their goods include lighting, motors, drives, heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems, building envelope improvements, and waste heat recovery, cooling, heating, or other usable forms of energy control systems.
Department Circular 2020-09-0018
The ESCO Guidelines include among others, certification requirements, review and evaluation process, and the classification of ESCOs, and states that ESCOs applying for certification must demonstrate their technical and managerial competence to design and implement energy efficiency projects, including energy audits, design engineering, providing or arranging project financing, construction management, operations and maintenance of energy efficient technologies, and verifying energy savings.
The following classification is hereby introduced in the ESCO Guidelines:
- Registered ESCO refers to an ESCO seeking accreditation for professional services to DOE for the first time that meets the minimum of requirements on legal and technical capacity. The validity of the Certificate for Registered ESCO shall be for three (3) years.
- Certified ESCO refers to an ESCO which in addition to meeting the requirements of a Registered ESCO also has proven performance or results-based projects savings experience and with proven customer experiences. The validity of the Certificate of Certified ESCO shall be valid for five (5) years.