EasyPro at the Tyndall National Institute
The EasyPro project, which aims to make Irish and EU public bodies energy efficient, kicked off on 1st July 2024 at the National Tyndall Institute at University College Cork, Ireland. The project combines the expertise of four Irish partner organisations: the International Energy Research Centre (IERC), Codema – Dublin’s Energy Agency, Lawler Sustainability and Carr Communications.
At the EasyPro kick-off meeting, the project advisor the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) explained why EasyPro was selected by the EU Commission to fund. The project formed at a time when the EU set an objective of transitioning to a clean energy system. EU states are now required to encourage public bodies to use energy service companies (ESCOs) and Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs) to finance energy efficient building renovations and implement plans to maintain or improve energy efficiency in the long term.
This is exactly what EasyPro aims to achieve and each project member who attended the kick-off meeting explained how their individual project tasks will work towards attaining this goal.
Tyndall National Institute, Cork
Lawler Sustainability presented on the design of the EasyPro solution, the aim of which is to help Irish universities implement EPCs and make this often-challenging process easy via a novel procurement framework. EPCs involve an ESCO partnering with a client organisation to install energy-saving measures in their buildings and guaranteeing a certain level of energy savings, while getting paid based on the amount of energy saved over time. Lawler Sustainability spoke about the energy efficiency projects that will be implemented at EasyPro’s selected pilot universities and the energy assessments to be undertaken at these university buildings.
CODEMA, Dublin’s Energy Agency, discussed their team’s upcoming engagement with the users of the solution: the senior managers and chief financial officers at the pilot universities. CODEMA also outlined the benefits of the EasyPro solution, which include the project’s performance guarantees and timeline to achieve savings for the pilot universities, as well as how the solution will help universities to achieve their decarbonisation targets.
In addition, University College Cork explained the financial modelling of the project and its investors relations; Carr Communications outlined how they will communicate the project to key stakeholders, the media and the wider public; and Lawler Sustainability reviewed the project’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) strategy as well as EasyPro’s goal for the solution to be implemented in public sectors in other EU member states. Indeed, the project coordinator Luciano De Tommasi, who also presented at the meeting, noted that piloting the EasyPro solution in universities specifically gives the project a unique opportunity to influence public bodies more widely given the status of the Irish higher education sector as a credible source of knowledge.
Overall, the kick-off meeting was a productive starting point for this goal and a glimpse into the future of energy efficiency.
