Last year, Georgia enacted a statute allowing state agencies to enter into energy savings performance contracts.  The Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA), which is the agency that will oversee the procurement of performance contracts for state agencies.  According to the 2012 Georgia Energy Report that was recently released by GEFA, it has been working with advisory groups to develop rules and regulations for the program as well as standardized procurement and contract documents.

Although there have not yet been any solicitations for proposals for ESPC projects for state agencies, GEFA recently announced the ESCOs that have been pre-qualified to compete for future performance contracting projects.  The prequalified ESCOs are: AECOM, Chevron Energy Solutions, ConEdison Solutions, Constellation Energy, Eaton-EMC, Energy Systems Group, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Linc Mechanical, NEXTera Energy Solutions, Noresco, Pepco Energy Services, Schneider Electric, Siemens and Trane. Additionally, GEFA has posted samples of its proposed Investment Grade Energy Audit Agreement and Energy Savings Performance Contract forms on its website.

According to the 2012 Energy Report, GEFA expects that performance contracting will help product 11,000 direct and indirect jobs and will ultimately help to reduce the state’s energy bills by up to 20 percent. In this month’s issue of the Construction Specifier (pg. 12), I have written an article about the benefits of ESPCs for both public agencies and contractors, particularly in a bad economy.  Hopefully, we’ll start to see some of these benefits in Georgia as the new performance contracting projects are initiated.

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