The judges have come back and announced the winners of the 2015 ESCI Annual Best Practices Awards Competition. Judges selected the top two winning projects in each of the ESCI pillars from among over 200 submissions.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners! If you would like to be considered for the 2nd Annual competition, submit your projects here.

About the Awards

Launched in 2010, the Energy Smart Community Initiative (ESCI) has contributed greatly to the advancement of green growth, sustainable development, long-term job creation and APEC’s goal of energy intensity reduction of at least 45 percent by 2035 with 2005 as the reference. As the information hub of ESCI network, the Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) has helped disseminate and share best practices of ESCI’s areas of focus in a systematic manner.

Following the success of 2013 Annual ESCI Best Practices Awards Program, the ESCI-KSP management team, with the support from APEC member economies, will host the 2015 Annual ESCI Best Practices Awards Program, in order to continue the momentum of regional efforts in developing new methods, technologies and applications, and to offers an opportunity to encourage best practices, facilitate knowledge-sharing and give public recognition to accomplishments in energy smart related cases within the APEC region. The ESCI management team has broken down the criteria adopted for former ESCI Best Practices Awards Program to particularly highlight merits in policy-making, strategy formation and implementation processes. Also, to encourage constant updates on the progress of various projects on the ESCI-KSP website, those which participated in former ESCI Best Practices Awards Program are welcome to take part in this year’s program with renewed contents on the website.

If you would like to be considered for the 2015 competition, submit your projects here.

Eligibility

The Awards will be open to both the public and private sectors who have submitted cases on the ESCI-KSP website (http://esci-ksp.org/). Below are two kinds of cases that are eligible for the program:

• New cases (submitted after 14 July 2013) which are being proposed, current undertaken or accomplished.
• Previously-submitted cases (submitted before 14 July 2013) which are renewed with new scope of projects, progress, achievement, and etc. after 14 July 2013.

All the above cases must be submitted electronically via ESCI-KSP by 31 July 2015.

1. Criteria

The Awards will be made in four main pillars—Smart Transport, Smart Buildings, Smart Grids, Smart Jobs and Consumers, and one cross-cutting examples of Low Carbon Model Towns of ESCI. Judging will consider the cases’ articulation of and compatibility with its goals, its implementation and outcomes. The criteria are:

Strategy (30%)

• Innovativeness (10%)

Is the policy design innovative which can encourage financial support and public-private partnership?

• Inspiration (10%)

Whether the idea can inspire later/subsequent cases?

• Clearness (10%)

Is the idea based on a clearly identifiable client/customer need?

Measure (40%)

• Practicability (10%)

Has an effective strategy for moving ahead been made?

• Replicability (10%)

Could the ideals, methods or techniques be applied internationally?

• Cost-effectiveness (10%)

Is there a measurable cost saving? Will it be cost-effective to implement?

• Consistency (10%)

Are adopted measures consistent with the strategy?

Performance (30%)

• Completeness (10%)

Will it make a considerable success in project goals?

• Verifiability (10%)

Is there any data presented to support the project?

• Impact (10%)

Will it make a significant change in the field of energy efficiency and energy saving? Will it impact multiple operational areas or just single specific area?

III. Procedure

The 2015 Annual ESCI Best Practices Awards Program has two stages as below:

1. Qualifying Round

A seven-member jury, commended from the EWG members, will evaluate the cases and select 3 cases from the contestant pool for each category. That will proceed to the next phase.

2. Final Round

The ESCI-KSP management team will request that each qualifying case submits a self-assessment statement outlining the cases’ goal, implementing strategies and performance or outcomes. The Jury then evaluates them and select winners of each category.

3. Time Table Information

The benchmarks and their respective closing dates are as follow:

IV. Jury

The Annual ESCI Best Practices Award jury will be organized and chaired by ESCI-KSP management team. It will have no less than 7 jury members. APEC member economies are invited to nominate candidates for the jury of the Award. The Jury Committee will be established by 30 May 2015.

V. Award Ceremony and Presentation

Winners from each category will receive a trophy issued by APEC EWG to honor their achievement and will be invited to present their cases at the Awards ceremony associated with the 50^th meeting of APEC EWG.