L’Energy Performance Contract ovvero il Contratto di rendimento energetico come nuovo strumento di efficientamento dell’Amministrazione

This article provides an overview of Energy Performance Contracts as an innovative approach for implementing investments in energy efficiency, mainly for the public sector, based on the purchase of a guaranteed level of energy efficiency and the remuneration related to the energy savings actually achieved. Energy Performance Contracts (EPC) are defined by the Directive 2012/27/UE as a contractual arrangement between the beneficiary and the provider of (an) energy efficiency improvement measures (usually an Energy service company - ESCo), verified and monitored during the whole term of the contract, in which the investments are paid for the relation to a contractually agreed level of energy efficiency improvement or other agreed energy performance criterion. In recent years, given the silence of the legislator, there have been discussions about the traceability of the EPC in the public-private partnership or the public service contract. A debate that seems, only apparently, to have subsided with the recent legislative intervention that explicitly included the EPC within the framework of the PPP. However, even after the legislative intervention, since the EPC is a new type of contract, hardly traceable to existing classes of contract, not all problematic profiles are exhausted. After underlying that EPCs have many similar characteristics to PPP projects, this paper focuses on the potential and benefits of a correct intersection between EPC-PPP. For this reason, the conclusion of an EPC in a PPP should be a winning strategy to improve the energy system in public infrastructures. However, there are several obstacles to correctly disseminating the energy performance contract. Public authorities should start looking at EPCs favourably, especially in the logic of PPP, mainly because they are seen as a way to implement investments even in the presence of financial constraints and budget shortages, allocating the costs and risks of performance to the ESCo.