A conceptual framework for delivering sustainable building energy efficency retrofit using the energy performance contracting (EPC) in China

Sustainable building has become a future development trend in the building sector. Building Energy Efficiency Retrofit (BEER) provides excellent opportunities to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings, and to promote environmental protection, the rational use of resources, occupants' health, all of which helps to improve the sustainability of existing buildings. Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) provided by Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) is a market mechanism to provide financial and technological support for energy efficiency projects. This paper aims to develop a sustainability promotion framework for BEER projects under the EPC mechanism to link the sustainable performance of BEER with the success factors of this EPC mechanism. Different types of building have different energy consumption characteristics. This research focuses on hotel buildings in China. The paper develops a framework for sustainable BEER through an EPC mechanism in hotel buildings based on the EFQM Excellence Model for business quality management. Interviews were conducted with experts from the hotel industry, from energy service companies and with academics. Based on the developed framework, the study has identified 11 performance indicators for sustainable BEER and 28 success factors of an EPC mechanism. This provides significant groundwork for future study in developing an assessment model to evaluate the sustainability of BEER projects.