Natural Resources Canada maintains a list of prequalified ESCOs for all federal departments to use. Federal Departments then more quickly and confidently draw from this list for all their energy performance contracting (EPCs) needs. This list is publicly available and any entity seeking to engage in EPCs can potentially use it.
The department of Public Works and Government Services Canada alone, represents a current volume of 400 Million dollars in EPCs. As such, the federal government is seeking to attract a larger range of potential Bidders, in order to better distribute projects across the industry, while concurrently managing risk appropriately.
To make the qualification more accessible and better manage risk, three main changes are introduced to the Qualification requirements :
- Requirements now accept project experience across North America rather than limiting accepted experience to projects performed in Canada.
- Technical and managerial requirements have been separated into two tiers of qualification, to encourage market competition and innovation throughout Canada. The newly added Tier 2 applies to potential Bidders with experience deploying energy services projects that may not have previously completed an EPC, and sets an upper cost limit of $5,000,000 per project.
- The existing Tier 1 requirements allow for P3 experience in lieu of project experience specifically with EPC performance guarantees, in combination with significant energy service project experience.