290 Energy Project Financing: Resources and Strategies for Success
industry to develop a consensus approach to measuring and verifying
efficiency investments in order to overcome existing barriers to ef-
ficiency. The International Performance Measurement and Verification
Protocol (IPMVP, or sometimes called the MVP) was first published in
1996, and contained methodologies that were compiled by the techni-
cal committee that comprised of hundreds of industry experts, initially
from the United States, Canada and Mexico.
In 1996 and 1997, twenty national organizations from a dozen
countries worked together to revise, extend and publish a new version
of the IPMVP in December 1997. This second version has been widely
adopted internationally, and has become the standard M&V documents
in countries ranging from Brazil to Romania. According to Mykola Rapt-
sun, former Deputy Chairman of State Committee of Ukraine Energy
Conservation, now President of ARENA-ECO, the Ukrainian energy
efficiency center:
The IPMVP has broad application for businessmen, energy managers,
law makers and educators and could become the national standard document
for M& V It has been important in helping the growth of the energy efficiency
industry in Ukraine.
North America’s energy service companies have adopted the IP-
MVP as the industry standard approach to measurement and verifica-
tion (M&V). According to Steve Schiller, President of Schiller Associates,
a leading energy efficiency consulting firm:
[In the United States], referencing the International Performance Mea-
surement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) has become essentially a require-
ment associated with developing both individual energy efficiency performance
contracting projects as well as performance contracting programs. Almost all
performance-contracting firms now state that their work complies with the IP-
MVP. Thus, in a few short years the IPMVP has become the de-facto protocol
for measurement and verification of performance contracts.
Institutions such as the World Bank and International Finance
Corporation (IFC) have found the Protocol beneficial and are incorpo-
rating it as a required part of new energy efficiency projects. According
to Russell Sturm, Senior Projects Officer, Environmental Projects Unit,
International Finance Corporation:
“In our work at the Environmental Projects Unit of the IFC we seek
investments in the emerging ESCO markets of the developing and transition
economies of the world. While these markets hold promise, the challenges on
the road to commercial viability are formidable. IPMVP provides the founda-