In keeping with that theme, BOMA on Monday unveiled a standardized contract that building owners can use to reduce energy costs via retrofitting their buildings and at the same time finance those retrofits without placing additional debt on their buildings. The model contract, developed by BOMA in cooperation with the Clinton Climate Initiative, is an agreement between an energy service provider and a building owner in which the energy service provider guarantees to save the building owner a certain amount of money on energy costs each year by retrofitting a building. In return, the building owner agrees to pay the energy services provider out of the savings realized through the retrofit.

Brenna Walraven, BOMA International chairman and executive managing director of national property management for USAA Real Estate Co., explained in a press conference regarding the model contract that such energy performance contracting has been in place for decades in the government sector. But energy performance contracting has not caught on in the private sector because of a number of hurdles: Thus far it has been costly, time-consuming and difficult to finance.

The new BOMA-CCI model energy performance contract is designed to overcome those obstacles by providing a standardized contract that addresses all of the legal and technical issues involved in negotiating such a deal, and it also provides a blueprint for financing the contract via a lease between the building owner and the energy services provider. Henry Chamberlain, president and CEO of BOMA who kicked off the energy contract press conference, said that the organization sought to create "a turn-key program and a simplified contract" for building owners.