Contracting

3 Internal Contracting needs specific
adaptations to the local context
Infinite Solutions has brought together
municipalities of various sizes:
Stuttgart as a major city with a highly
structured large organisation as well as
Udine, Almada, Águeda and Koprivnica
as intermediate or small cities with
a respectively lean structure. Since
Internal Contracting is simply meant
to establish entrepreneurial mindsets
in terms of energy retrofits within
public authorities, “size” is no criterion
in deciding whether public authorities
should apply this concept. However,
the concept of Internal Contracting
needs to be adapted to the individual
local context.
For intermediate cities, like Udine and
Almada, with populations of 100,000
and over it is relatively “simple” to
transpose the “Stuttgart model” as
the structure of the authority and the
possibilities to work with related city
companies and associations are quite
similar. The main problem is, in these
times of lasting economic crisis in
Southern Europe, to convince the city
council of the benefits of the scheme
and in particular to allocate the initial
budget for the revolving fund.
In small cities with populations of
fewer than 50,000 as it is the case
for Águeda and Koprivnica (via REA
Sjever as a partner in the INFINITE
project), the situation is different. The
authority is much smaller, several
services/departments are managed by
the same staff and under the mayor’s
direct authority, so the business model
needs to be setup differently; the
agreement to be signed between the
different city departments also has to
be different as the whole procedure
is managed by one single service (in
Águeda) or an external expert (REA
Sjever). Long-term robustness is
also more difficult to guarantee as
there will be only a limited number of
measures with a short pay-back time.
3 Internal Contracting requires a
suitable environment
To be used by regional and local
authorities and other public players
(e.g. universities, military) Internal
Contracting requires an internal unit
in charge of energy management,
equipped appropriately to monitor
energy consumption and with qualified
staff, able to monitor energy use. This
unit needs to be commissioned to
investigate energy saving potentials
and to suggest investments for energy
efficiency improvements as well as to
supervise their implementation.
University of
Clermont-Ferrand
Almada
Stuttgart 1995
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
Agueda
Figure 30: Initial fund to annual energy costs ratio
3 Internal Contracting requires a
minimum initial budget
In order to introduce the scheme
successfully a minimum budget is
needed. This guidebook proposes two
ways to determine the appropriate
initial amount.
In Section 3.2.2 the required budget
was expressed as a function of the
cost of annually planned investments
in energy saving measures. Thus, this
approach is built upon the ability to
realise measures. Some knowledge
of the figures and experience with
the procedures of the facility involved
is needed to calculate a specific
monetary value for the initial budget
with this “bottom-up”-method.
Nevertheless, it can be a useful tool
(e.g. for an energy manager) to justify
the amount needed for an initial
budget when requesting it.
Udine
Koprivnica
t” rtment
-owned
y
Department of
energy
management
Analysis of energy
saving potential
Contract
Municipal
facility
(e.g. school)
t
nt’s
t
Infinite Solutions Guidebook – Internal Contracting
Budget for
energy saving
measures
Budget g for
energy costs