ESCo Feasibility Study

During 2006/07 Manchester is my Planet initiated and commissioned an ESCO feasibility study. A report on the full feasbility study is available below.

Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) are not a new concept; organisations such as Dalkia and Elyo have been operating as ESCOs for many years. Many ESCOs are already in operation, in a variety of forms, around the UK but they are used to a far greater extent elsewhere in the world. In Scandinavia, for example, community ESCOs commonly operate large biomass district heating schemes.

In the UK however, they are a relatively new concept to many and they challenge the UK’s culture of asset ownership and are therefore often misconceived as a distinct model rather than a “way of doing things”.

Energy Service Companies offer significant benefits through economies of scale for both capital equipment, such as energy efficient or renewable energy technologies, and feedstock or fuels. ESCOs can also offer increased efficiencies and incentives to improve efficiencies as a result of greater energy management expertise, experience, capital investment and guarantees. They can exemplify the concept of distributed generation and can offer the opportunity to bring people ‘closer’ to their sources of energy.

This project seeks to form the basis of a phased approach to the roll out of Energy Supply Companies (ESCOs) in Greater Manchester and the North West. It aims to:

This study will be used to inform other interested parties on the advantages of forming an ESCO type company as well as progressing other energy reduction and energy saving projects. The implementation of such projects will help to accelerate the use of ESCOs to meet local, regional and national climate change and energy targets.