The Heat Pump Experts

ESCO Funding

What is an ESCO?

Fundamentally, Energy Services Companies (ESCOs) involve third party organisations for whom energy management is their core business, and who have business models design to support various cash and profit profiles. ESCOs represent significant opportunities to reduce energy costs and climate change emissions through economies of scale for both capital equipment, such as energy efficient or renewable energy technologies, and fuels.

The greater energy management expertise, experience, capital investment and guarantees that ESCOs offer can exemplify the concept of distributed generation and can present the opportunity to bring people 'closer' to their sources of energy.

What can a GI ESCO offer?

Geothermal International, in partnership with Greenrock Energy and Scottish and Southern Energy acts as an ESCO.

This ESCO business model will finance and handle the often complex design and infrastructure issues, installation and operation and maintenance of sustainable and energy-saving Ground Source Heat Pump systems (GSHP). The target market includes hospitals and healthcare, offices, leisure centres, data centres, supermarkets, universities, colleges and other customers with suitable energy requirements, enabling them to reduce their carbon emissions and energy costs without any capital outlay. GSHP systems are most economical in buildings where both cooling and heating are required, in different parts, in different seasons, or both, as this allows higher utilisation of the plant. Other sectors covered include social/mixed housing projects.

With the joint resources of expertise in energy efficiency, capital to invest in energy efficiency technologies and the potential for cheaper energy through economies of scale, Geothermal International's ESCO offer is of unrivalled experience in the energy efficiency industry and a service solution that befits the client's needs.

Would my project benefit from an ESCO help?

The ESCO approach, as a general concept, can offer many benefits for projects and their associated stakeholders. For example, the capital cost of a GSHP installation can be turned into a revenue cost that relates to energy supplied, producing overall savings for users, cutting carbon emissions and helping to comply with the increasingly stringent CO2 targets under the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC).

The Government supports the use of ESCOs for local authorities as 'a mechanism for working together with other agencies to tackle climate change', stating "we particularly encourage partners in our major cities to take up the challenge locally", but their potentially broader skills base and external network means that energy service companies can provide efficient and relatively un-disruptive turnkey project management for any capital projects in both the public and the private sector.

The following demonstrate the wide range of activities included within the definition of 'energy services'.

  • Energy analysis and audits
  • Energy management
  • Project design and implementation
  • Maintenance and operation
  • Monitoring and evaluation of savings
  • Property/facility management
  • Energy and/or equipment supply
  • Provision of service (space heating/cooling, lighting, etc.)