First European industry project certified by the Investor Confidence Project
Austrian community catering supplier GOURMET leads the way in energy efficiency with the first European industry project certified by the Investor Confidence Project.
The Investor Confidence Project’s innovative Investor Ready Energy Efficiency™ Certification has been awarded to a waste heat utilisation project at GMS GOURMET GmbH. The project saves natural gas and electricity by using the waste heat of two fast cooling plants to support the heating demand of three ventilation systems at GOURMET’s production site in Vienna.
Managing Director Hannes Hasibar emphasizes GOURMET’s leadership when it comes to energy efficiency and innovation: "As a responsible company we treat the earth’s natural resources with care and continuously work on improving efficiency and standards."
GOURMET’s appetite for innovation goes hand in hand with ICP Europe’s new Investor Ready Energy Efficiency (IREETM) Certification for industry which delivers high quality projects and safer returns by standardising how energy efficiency projects are developed, documented and measured.
Convinced of the benefits of ICP, energy efficiency specialist denkstatt & enertec became the first registered ICP project developer for industry projects and – together with Austrian ICP partner denkstatt – assisted GOURMET in applying for certification for its waste heat recovery project certified, the first industrial project in Europe. As technical partner, as well as UK advocates for ICP, Verco acted as quality assurance assessor for the project, working closely with denkstatt & enertec to certify the project. The ICP Europe Complex Industry Protocol was used.
Managing Director Christian Schuetzenhofer: "The application of ICP through denkstatt & enertec gives the project owner even more robust, independently verified savings calculations and an additional level of quality assurance. Moreover, it puts more focus on proper project implementation in addition to project development. "
The project has predicted annual energy savings of 635 MWh in natural gas and 135 MWh in electricity. As project developer, denkstatt & enertec provided the underlying baselining and energy savings calculations and developed implementation plans for Operational Performance Verification (OPV), Operations, Maintenance & Monitoring (OM&M) and Measurement & Verification (M&V) processes.
ICP Europe Senior Advisor Steve Fawkes: "The ICP framework assembles best practices and existing technical standards into a set of Protocols that define a clear roadmap for developing projects, determining savings estimates, and documenting and verifying results. GOURMET’s IREE-certified project shows that our framework – which has been successfully applied to multiple buildings projects in the past – also delivers high-quality industrial projects that the project owner can bank on."
The ICP Protocols and accompanying tools and templates are published as open-source documents ready to be used in energy efficiency projects in industry & energy supply and street lighting projects across Europe. Free online training for interested project developers and quality assurance assessors are regularly offered.
