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Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) ENABLE is designed to permit a standardized and streamlined procurement process for small federal projects to install energy conservation measures (ECMs) in six months or less. 

There are no specific size or cost restrictions—to date, projects have ranged from around $200,000 to $18 million in facilities ranging from less than 200,000 square feet up to 2.1 million square feet—making ESPC ENABLE well-suited to meet the needs of a wide variety of federal facilities.

ESPC ENABLE uses a set of pre-established procurement and technical tools to administer projects through the General Services Administration (GSA) Supply Schedule SIN 334512. A number of tools and templates are available to streamline the process to help agencies expedite project development and award.

Enterprise Approach

Agencies that adopt an agencywide (or regionwide) enterprise approach to implementing ESPCs may be able to award more and larger projects—with shorter development times—than agencies that follow a project-by-project approach. 

An "enterprise approach," is integrated and aligned across the various administrative and operational units that constitute the entirety of an agency.

Learn about the enterprise approach for energy-saving projects using ESPC ENABLE.

Energy Conservation Measures

ESPC ENABLE provides facilities an opportunity to implement specific energy conservation measures (ECMs) in a streamlined manner using the Investment Grade Audit (IGA) Tool and streamlined measurement and verification (M&V) methods. These ESPC ENABLE ECMs include:

  • Lighting
  • Water
  • Simple heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) controls
  • HVAC packaged system replacement, boilers, and chillers
  • Solar photovoltaics.

Project awards may also combine the ESPC ENABLE ECMs with other ECMs available under GSA Supply Schedule SIN 334512 under a hybrid approach. The process for considering ECMs that are not covered in the IGA Tool resembles that used under traditional ESPC projects, with comparable due diligence entailing the energy service company (ESCO) providing savings and cost estimates and describing the M&V methodology that is to be used, subject to review by the agency.  

ENABLE plans to expand the IGA Tool to address several ECMs currently outside of ENABLE, such as motors, while also considering the potential to add other priority ECMs. 

Learn about the hybrid approach to using ECMs.

Need assistance?

Submit an ESPC ENABLE question through the FEMP Assistance Request Portal.

Resilience in Natural Disaster Preparedness and Recovery

Many federal facilities are vulnerable to natural disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding, and fire. FEMP can assist in disaster preparedness and recovery from these events. In particular, ESPC ENABLE provides turnkey design, installation, and financing services with short implementation periods (as little as six months from start to award), while ESPC can also be useful if actively managed. 

With no up-front funding required and the ability to combine appropriated and financed funding, project planning and development can get underway even if disaster-relief funding or other appropriations are uncertain or not yet available. When disaster-relief appropriations can be obtained, they allow for resilience and security of supply and microgrid features that may not produce significant savings in and of themselves but are important complements to ESPC ENABLE ECMs because they allow sites to operate independently of the grid and prevent future outages.

Combined with ESPC ENABLE renewable energy and energy-efficiency ECMs, affected sites can be made operational and resilient in less than a year. There are several examples of ESPC ENABLE projects being used to address damage from natural disasters. A number of FEMP tools and mechanisms are available to help in these situations.

Video Url

Video case study showcases the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ESPC ENABLE border lighting project that increased safety, saved energy, and reduced maintenance costs.

Permission granted for use.

Resources and Support

The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) provides a number of tools and templates to help agencies proceed through the ESPC ENABLE process.

Agencies needing support at a transactional level for individual projects must sign an interagency agreement with FEMP for project facilitation and contracting support from the ESPC ENABLE team (agencies can repay FEMP either up-front or over the life of the ESPC ENABLE contract, thereby paying from the project's savings). Enterprise projects implemented under a memorandum of understanding outlining the agency's enterprise approach are exempt from the FEMP support charges.