What is PERMANENT?

 

The PERMANENT project is aimed at increasing the knowledge about monitoring and verification of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Measurement and Verification (M&V) of energy efficiency projects is an important tool towards removing the distrust in projected savings and payback from the site of financial institutions and decision makers on corporate level.

The PERMANENT project will address the most common barrier to deployment of energy performance contracts by end users: disbelief that planned project results will be achieved and pay back the investment in a sustainable manner. This disbelief or lack of confidence in project savings impedes investment even where energy audits or other engineering analyses demonstrate sound investment opportunities.

Successful energy efficiency and mainly Third Party Financing (TPF) projects have, however, demonstrated key techniques for measuring project results, verifying achievement of guaranteed savings, and financing energy savings projects without the need for collateral beyond that of the project itself.

PERMANENT will therefore address these common performance fears in emerging European economies, to significantly enhance the rate of investment in energy savings projects. These fears are addressed by:

  • Developing and testing harmonized and integrated approaches for end users to measure and verify their energy savings in 5 Member States (the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol, IPMVP - will be the basis for this development);
  • Educating energy end users, financiers and energy services suppliers on performance risk measurement and management techniques in energy saving projects;
  • Creating trained instructors who will be able to continue imparting PErformance Risk MANagement ENergy Training after the completion of this project.

Performance measurement, verification, management and reporting should become standard practice if the benefits of energy efficiency investments are to become sustainable, reliable and PERMANENT.

Target market sectors are: industrial, commercial, multiple residential, institutional (e.g. education, health care), and Public Sector establishments.
 

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