Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the white certificates
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(if any), the special privilege pursuant to article 46 of
legislative decree No. 385/1993 over the movable assets of the ESCO (which shall
include the plants and equipment necessary for the energy efficiency improve-
ment), any pledge over the accounts receivables arising from the EPC or energy
service contract and any relevant contract or the assignment by way of security of
the same. Furthermore, it cannot be excluded that in the next future the ESCOs
may avail themselves of the possibility to issue the so called ''minibonds''
exploiting the new rules and tax advantages on the bonds enacted by article 32 of
the law decree No. 83/2012 and by article 12 of law decree No. 145/2013 (the so
called ''Destinazione Italia'' decree).
The pros of the use of the contracts with the ESCOs are inter alia that:
• it reduces the financial investment burdens for the client;
• the complete management of the investment risk is allocated on a professional
who can act on the basis of his competence, expertise and his consolidated and
standardized criteria;
• it can benefit from conto termico
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and TEEs.
The contra are inter alia that:
• the medium-long term contract is subject to the risk of the business of the client
who
does
not
pay
for
the
investment
and
may
be
encouraged
to
be
opportunistic;
• if the investment involves assets which are not movable, any existing mortgage
of the client may extend to the investment made by the ESCO.
A possible risk mitigation for the ESCO is the risk-sharing with the client (by
means of creating a special purpose vehicle for the single project controlled by the
ESCO and where the client has minority shareholder rights and an undertaking to
inject additional equity under specific circumstances) and/or with the supplier of
the equipment and plant and/or with the supplier of the energy and/or with a
combination of sharing the risks with the client and the supplier (if the latter
accepts to be paid at a later stage by executing a vendor loan or other modalities of
deferred payment).
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Please see above for more details.
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In case of conto termico incentive the ESCO must enter into a contract for the energy
performance with the public entities and for the interventions provided for by article 4, second
paragraph of Ministerial Decree 28 December 2012. The EPC contract must comply with the
requirements set out by the law provisions, lacking which the energy efficiency intervention
can lose the conto termico incentive.
