U.S. ESCO Industry Research

A cross-divisional LBNL team assesses ESCO industry performance and market trends and manages the largest databases of ESCO projects in the world.

Policymakers, federal, state and local energy officials, and other stakeholders partner with Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) to achieve significant energy and water savings primarily in public and institutional sector facilities. ESCOs typically deliver cost-effective savings to end-use customers primarily through the use of performance-based contracting where ESCOs guarantee annual savings levels. Berkeley Lab, with the partnership of the National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO), assesses ESCO industry performance and market trends and collects project-level data from ESCOs, their customers, and government agencies.

As part of this work, LBNL manages the largest databases of ESCO project-level information in the world, including a historic database that contains more than 5,000 projects going back more than 20 years, and the more recently developed eProject Builder database, which contains over 3,500 projects. LBNL frequently responds to public requests for analysis of data from these databases, including investment levels, estimated and actual project performance, deployment of energy-related technologies, and economic benefits to customers and society, in various market segments and locations.

EMP also leads ongoing development of eProject Builder (ePB), the national secure web-based data standardization and tracking system, which addresses the need to standardize and streamline data collection and reporting for energy projects. ePB enables end customers and their ESCOs to collect, track and report comparable financial and performance parameters for energy saving performance contract (ESPC), utility energy service contracts (UESC) and other types of projects across all market sectors, including: federal, state, local, K–12, universities and colleges, public housing, health, industrial, and private commercial.