Impact Assessment Standards
To receive funding eeef eligible projects should achieve on an annual basis at least 30% primary energy savings and/or at least 30% CO2e savings compared to baseline. To ensure the standards of the impact assessment are met, the energy consumption, CO2e emissions and primary energy savings of each project are tracked quarterly and monitored in line with the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) for energy accounting, ISO 14064 for carbon accounting. All methodologies used by the eeef have been validated by a global engineering company. The data is based on estimations for projects under construction and with less than one year of operations and actual data for projects which have been in operation for over one year.
Currently, all projects with concrete data are reporting in alignment with these guidelines, and all new projects are aligned with these frameworks. Factor sources include the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) for technology benchmark data and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the conversion of energy data into greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity emission factors are sourced from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and are updated annually in line with ISO 14064-2. For some projects in the portfolio, factors cannot be updated due to project specifics, so they continue to report on factors issued within the loan documentation.
To determine the impact of eeef investments through measuring, monitoring and verification processes, the eeef technical criteria need to be assessed based on the project’s technology and investment size. For projects with higher investment volumes and/or more complex technologies, detailed energy analyses are required in the form of third-party-validated reports.
For small standard projects (e.g. street lighting), project savings can be obtained directly by using validated calculations from greenstem™, the Fund’s proprietary impact management and verification system. The calculation is aligned to the international standards mentioned above and best practices, which are validated by a global engineering company.
BlueMark
eeef’s impact management system is independently verified by BlueMark, a leading provider of impact verification services in the impact investing market. BlueMark was incubated and launched in January 2020 by Tideline, a leading women-owned impact investing consultancy, with a mission to strengthen trust in impact investing and to help bring more accountability to the impact investment process. As of November 2021, BlueMark completed more than 50 verifications.
eeef’s Independent Verification Report can be found under Downloads.