EU prize for exemplary energy services awarded to SBT
Energy systems refurbished in more than 1000 buildings – Cost savings of 110 million EUR guaranteed
In view of the potentially enormous energy savings for the current stock of buildings, the “European Energy Service Award” initiated by the European Commission was presented on May 31, 2006 in Berlin as part of the European Congress entitled “Energy Services for Energy Efficiency”. Siemens Building Technologies received the award as “Best European Energy Service Provider”. Other award-winners included the Berlin Senate Administration for City Development (Projects category) and the Graz Energy Agency (Promoter category).
It's well worth plotting your course at an early stage: When Siemens Building Technologies (SBT) – at the time operating under the name Landis & Staefa – launched its “Performance Contracting” energy service, no-one then could have guessed what dimensions this business module would assume as a solution for municipal, commercial and ecological problems. “SBT invested about 30 man-years in training and market preparation before the “Energy Service” was ready for the European market,” said Ullrich Brickmann, Head of Marketing & Sales in the Energy & Environmental Solutions business unit of SBT, at the award ceremony of the European Energy Service Award in Berlin. The jury explained its decision to honor SBT because of the company's “great readiness to accept risks when opening new markets and its intention to shape the competition to the customer's benefit.”
10 years ago, the then Landis & Staefa took part in a Europe-wide call for tenders and won the two Berlin building pools 1 and 3 with a total of 74 public buildings including schools, nurseries, gyms and administration buildings. Today, SBT has about 200 public buildings under energy saving contracts and guarantees energy savings of 5.26 million EUR annually. SBT is the market leader in Germany and has refurbished the energy systems of about 1100 buildings to date. Investments amounting to 70 million EUR in this building stock are offset by energy cost savings of 110 million EUR; furthermore, this represents a saving of around 430,000 tonnes of CO2.
At the Energy Congress, Ullrich Brickmann made no secret of the fact that many more energy saving partnerships could be established if the construction supervising authorities would take a more open and flexible approach to energy saving contracting: “Unfortunately, almost no calls for tenders for energy saving contracting projects are issued in North Rhine-Westphalia and the model is actually banned in Thuringia. At the same time, SBT is offering tailor-made solutions, in other words providing expertise to support the construction supervising authorities' own initiatives.”
The commercial potential still remaining in refurbishing the energy systems of the building stock is illustrated by a forecast from the Berlin Energy Agency. “If it were possible to remove structural obstacles in a systematic way, a market for energy services with a long-term annual volume of up to 25 billion EUR could be created throughout Europe,” observed Michael Gei?ler, CEO of the Berlin Energy Agency, summing up the situation. This is precisely what the European Energy Service Award is aiming at: It is intended to motivate energy service providers and energy agencies to remove obstacles, develop new services and – importantly for the breadth of impact – to communicate successes as well.
