EDF Wins Business Achievement Award for Efforts to Advance Clean Energy Financing

Each year the Climate Change Business Journal (CCBJ) awards businesses and non-profits for their outstanding work in the climate and environment industry. This year, we are thrilled to announce that EDF’s own Investor Confidence Project (ICP) was named a winner of CCBJ’s Business Achievement Award in the category of Finance. Winners of the 18 categories – ranging from solar and wind power to transportation and energy efficiency – were recognized this month at an Environmental Industry Summit in San Diego.

The Investor Confidence Project received recognition for its efforts to help create a market for investor-ready energy efficiency projects. From the CCBJ award website: “ICP is moving the energy efficiency industry closer to the Holy Grail of securitization, in which energy efficiency projects can be valued based on consistent parameters with little project-specific analysis and vetting-processes that ratchet up soft costs quickly.”

Investors need a way to manage risk, and they abhor uncertainty. The fact that historically every energy efficiency project is unique, makes the process of underwriting performance risk very challenging and expensive. ICP creates a standardized class of projects assembling existing technical standards into a set of Energy Performance Protocols that outline best practices, existing standards, and documentation that can enable financing or managing of energy performance risk.

As with all red carpet award winners, our list of “thank yous” is long – so instead check out our amazing list of supporting project allies. It was the contributions from our many industry and public sector stakeholders that ensure the ICP Protocols strike the right balance and can help remove long standing barriers to large-scale investment in energy efficiency. EDF is honored and thrilled to be a recipient of this prestigious award, but as the saying goes, “it takes a village” to accomplish true success.