Prelios Integra: upgrade for the IFAD headquarters an EU EEnvest project case study

Milan, August 5, 2020 – The Prelios Integra energy upgrade project for the headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome has been selected as one of the energy management best practices of the European Commission’s EEnvest Project.

The ambitious target of the improvements in energy efficiency introduced by Prelios Integra, which will be included among the Energy Efficiency Investments case studies, is a 37% reduction in current energy consumption by December 2021. The main interventions include the installation of a photovoltaic plant and a new co-generator, the move to multi-purpose air-conditioning systems and the upgrade of the lighting systems with LED equipment.

“Environmental questions and climate risk are taking on ever greater importance in public policy and consequently influencing private-sector strategies,” commented Nicolò Tarantino, CEO of Prelios Integra, a Prelios Group company that manages properties for large public and private real estate operators. “Supporting the real estate sector in the move toward more modern sustainable forms of green investment also means being able to provide financially appropriate valuation tools to raise the awareness of investors who attribute growing value to the sector.”

The various technical solutions implemented by Prelios Integra on a building that already has LEED® EBO&M Platinum certification will be the model for research and development of technical and financial risk assessment KPIs from the point of view of the investor and the basis for the development of the EEnvest project’s “Energy Efficiency Investment” platform.

The work began in 2019 and will be completed by the end of summer 2020. From January to December 2021, a monitoring program will analyze all consumption-related parameters to optimize management of the IFAD building.

Sara Canepa, vice president Technical Services and Energy Management at Prelios Integra and a member of the EEnvest Advisory Board, said: “Energy upgrades in buildings have a vital role in the fight against climate change. Our objective is to reconcile the needs of the investor with those of the environment. We are very proud and happy to be able to make a contribution in this area and to have our project selected as a case study in the EEnvest program.”

Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program, the EEnvest project intends to promote dialogue between the technical and the financial communities through development of an online platform to calculate the investment risk associated with extensive energy efficiency operations. By using a jointly agreed high-precision technical-financial risk computation method, EEnvest aims to lower the cost of credit for public entities, financiers and owners of large property portfolios and promote greater allocation of private capital in the sector.