Energy Service Company (ESCO) Project Performance Benchmarking Fact Sheets

The U.S. Department of Energy's Technical Assistance Team worked with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO) to develop this series of fact sheets to assist American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) grantees and end-users in benchmarking energy efficiency upgrade costs and expected annual savings for municipal, state, federal government, and healthcare facilities, universities, colleges, and K–12 schools. The values reported represent typical project costs, savings, and economics for ESCO projects in the LBNL/NAESCO project database. We define an ESCO as a company that provides energy efficiency-related and other value-added services and that employs performance contracting as a core part of its energy efficiency services business. The LBNL/NAESCO Project Database, funded by the Department of Energy, is the largest database of ESCO project information in the world with more than 3,600 projects. The database includes information on project costs, savings, measures installed, facility physical characteristics, market segment, and location. Information for approximately 75% of the projects in the database is from NAESCO's voluntary accreditation program with information on the remaining projects provided by state and federal agencies that administer performance contracting programs.