Peterborough partners with Honeywell in energy efficiency framework

Peterborough Council has awarded an Energy Performance Contract to Honeywell Building Solutions. The company will, over eight years, make the council’s buildings as energy efficient as possible. The company will be allowed to make changes to buildings and plants and install on-site energy generation where possible.

In a video released to explain Peterborough’s work on energy as part of its intention to become the environmental capital of the UK, John Harrison, the council’s executive director for strategic resources explained: “We have been working with the Green Investment Bank to set up the first Energy Performance Contract in the country. Peterborough’s schools, all of its public buildings, will have the benefit of a major private sector company to come in and work with us and save money. It reduces the carbon footprint and the amount of money being spent on energy, so everybody is going to win.”

Furthermore, any local authority in England can sign into the contract with the intention being that others will follow Peterborough’s lead. “We’ll have proved that these things can work and then every council up and down the country can use it and prove that it can work for themselves locally,” said Harrison.

Kit Gillibrand is an energy associate with Davis Langdon, Peterborough’s technical advisers on the Energy Performance Contract. He told Room 151: “The procurement was run so that this would operate essentially as a central purchasing authority so that other councils would be able to access the framework and be comfortable that they had a solution that was already Official Journal of the EU compliant rather than having to run their own procurement process.” Basildon, Southend on Sea and Thurrock councils are looking at becoming early adopters of the framework.

Honeywell will suggest packages of improvements to buildings having considered a brief and data provided. The company will also provide a suggestion for the funding of the project, although local authorities are free to fund the works themselves if that method is more efficient.

The thinking behind an Energy Performance Contract is that the council has a sufficiently large property portfolio to attract investment into energy efficiency works. The £12,000 energy saving created by one primary school, for example,  would not be enough to attract an investor to back capital works, but the savings across the whole portfolio of a council – on the other hand – would.