Noesis Energy, a financing and savings platform for energy-efficiency projects, has launched performance-based financing designed specifically for commercial and industrial energy-efficiency project developers. The Noesis Shared Savings Agreement (SSA), an industry first, is ideal for efficiency projects ranging from $500,000 to $2–3 million. It is optimized for mid-size to large project developers that want to offer off-balance-sheet performance contracting to their customers.
Last year, Noesis launched Noesis Financial Services to help its customers overcome capital budget constraints by providing them with an outsourced financing desk that helps them evaluate and secure third-party financing for small to mid-sized efficiency retrofits. Initially providing basic brokerage services, Noesis Financial Services has signed up more than 30 energy efficiency product and service providers, and quoted over $37 million in energy projects. Today’s announcement—the innovative Shared Savings Agreement—builds on that momentum by expanding Noesis’ available financing options to meet the varying needs of building owners, from basic capital leases to off-balance sheet shared-incentive contracts.
“Aligning the financing with the actual energy savings realized has been a model that has been hugely successful in residential solar. With Noesis Shared Savings Agreement, we’re applying that same model to the commercial and industrial energy efficiency market, only at a much larger scale,” said Scott Harmon, CEO of Noesis Energy.
Until now, the energy efficiency market has been dominated by several, large energy service companies specializing in multi-million dollar, “turnkey” energy savings projects for mostly government customers—often involving the complete renovation of entire facilities. But recent advances in energy-efficient systems for buildings, such as LED lighting and intelligent building controls, are bringing energy efficiency to the mainstream, in effect creating a ‘mid-market’ for lower-cost energy efficiency with virtually any commercial or industrial building. What has been missing is a financing solution that allows these mainstream C&I customers to pay for their efficiency projects and retrofits according to how much energy they actually save, making the projects cash-flow positive from day one. Noesis SSA addresses this gap in the efficiency-financing marketplace.
“This new shared savings vehicle from Noesis is the latest example of technology-based underwriting closing the gap between energy efficiency projects and innovative financing,” said Matt Golden, senior energy finance consultant and director of Environmental Defense Fund’s Investor Confidence Project (ICP). “This new financing option is a great example of how standardizing and streamlining the technical underwriting process can connect capital sources with a stream of consistent and reliable energy-efficiency project deal-flow.”
The SSA is similar to a solar power purchase agreement, in that it allows the customer to pay only for the energy they actually save from the project. Similar in concept to the PPA ‘net meter’ payment, the SSA customer pays a variable payment based upon the amount of avoided energy measured, a concept sometimes referred to as ‘negawatt pricing.’ However, SSAs are much simpler and more flexible than traditional large-scale guaranteed performance contracts, making them more attractive to mainstream commercial and industrial CFOs. In addition, the SSA is designed for mid-sized projects and the contractors and developers that sell them, so they allow mid-sized firms to position themselves as ‘virtual ESCOs’ and greatly extend their customer reach, all without over-burdening their balance sheets with risk.
“The biggest challenge we always face, and that holds back energy efficiency projects from moving forward, are budget constraints and perceived risk with return on investment from savings,” said Pete Kramer, Energy Service Sales Leader of TraneOregon. “The Noesis Shared Savings Agreement model directly addresses both of these barriers. Having a simple solution where the customer only pays if the project delivers the promised savings just makes sense.”
“Our lighting efficiency projects are great investments for our customers,” said Chad Palmer, CEO of Energyficient Lighting Systems. “Delivering them with low-risk, off-balance-sheet financing vehicles like the Noesis SSA makes them ‘no-brainer’ investments.”
“No budget and lack of trust in savings forecasts are two of the most common reasons why CFOs don’t approve energy efficiency projects,” said John Byers, CEO of Infinilume Corp. “The Noesis SSA allows you to overcome both objections by providing third-party financing where the building owner only pays if the project delivers the promised savings. We believe the Noesis SSA is the financing vehicle that can significantly unlock the commercial mid-market energy efficiency retrofit market.”
To learn more about the Noesis Shared Savings Agreement, sign up for a free webinar.