New Cooling-as-a-Service Toolkit Offers Downloadable Contracts

The Swiss-based Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE), leader of the CaaS Initiative, has announced the launch of the Cooling as a Service (CaaS) Toolkit, which includes customer communication documents anda a CaaS pricing model, as well as CaaS contracts. 

CaaS is an alternative financial model to the traditional upfront purchasing of equipment, using a pay-per-service model instead.

The toolkit was developed by BASE and is now available for free on the CaaS Initiative's website, under the tools section. The contract was designed with the support of Vaccianna & Whittingham Attorneys at Law, a Jamaican law firm, in collaboration with a  U.K-based law firm. Inputs from an international accountancy firm were also included  to ensure the contract accounts for key elements of the IFRS16 accounting standard anda is treated as an off-balance contract. The contract  balances the rights and obligations of the service provider and the client. 

“The CaaS team is greatly thankful to all the people who dedicated time and effort into [the Toolkit's] development,” said Thomas Motmans, Sustainable Energy Finance Specialist at BASE. “It trusts that the contract addresses the needs of the market and provides great value to businesses, society, and the environment by creating a sound structure to implement the servitization model, applied to the cooling industry in this case.”

The CaaS pricing model was delivered in close collaboration with the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, which endorsed the model in 2019 as one of the most innovative business models to accelerate the transition to energy-efficient cooling on the market. As with the CaaS contract, the team thoroughly stress-tested the model with real-case projects in various parts of the world and industries, which enabled them to accurately incorporate key requirements from the market and stakeholders. "The BASE team particularly thanks Leigh Madeira (Manager of Climate Finance) and Morgan Richmond (Climate Finance Analyst) from The Lab, who supported BASE in yielding a model that rightfully represents the value of servitization for the cooling industry," said Motmans.

“Releasing the CaaS contract and pricing model to the market will enable companies to implement cooling as a service without the hurdle of having to create these tools from scratch, which can be expensive both in terms of time and cost to these companies,"added Motmans.  "We look forward to seeing more real cases taking shape around the world."