Episode 3 of EVO Insights is an interview that I've wanted to do for a long time. Earlier this week globe trotter Thomas Dreessen and I got to chat about the recently released IEEFP (the International Energy Efficiency Financing Protocol). This is a protocol that has been in the works for a long time and I got to learn a little about its history and about Thomas' hopes for it. Click here  to listen to the show right in your browser or click here to download the episode. Episode 3 Transcription Nathan: Welcome to EVO Insights, episode three. Today we will get a chance to hear from Thomas  Dreessen and learn a little bit more about IEEFP, the newly released International Energy Efficiency Financing Protocol from EVO. We’ll learn a little bit about its history, how it got started and what we are hoping the effects will be around the globe. Hope that you enjoy and remember to check in and give us any feedback that you have at evo-blog.com or evo-world.org. Thanks a lot. Nathan: Hey everybody. Today we have Thomas Dreessen with us who was one of the main people behind the International Energy Efficiency Financing Protocol, the new protocol that was published by EVO this year. Tom how are you doing? Where are you at this morning? Tom: I’m outside of the US, down in the Caribbean, trying to relax a little bit in the middle of me closing a big energy efficiency equity fund in China which I anticipate closing in the next 60 days. Nathan: Oh great, so even in the Caribbean working in China [laughs] the world has gotten small. Tom: Correct. Nathan: Thomas, tell us a little bit about how you got started in energy efficiency and how you ended up at EVO. Tom: I’m one of the founding ESCO members in the U.S. I formed an energy services company back in the early 1980’s when the U.S. industry was just getting started and I came from a financial background. As you may know, the ESCO business model is set up to where the ESCO puts up all of the capital. It goes in the large buildings and industrial sites and puts up all of the capital, has to arrange all the capital and get paid from savings so it’s a very capital intensive process to raise the capital on an on-going basis to implement the business model. I got started in that back in the early 80’s and ended up forming ten ESCO’s in ten different countries and developed projects in 24 countries. When I was doing this, I was the CEO and the financial guy structuring all of the project plans. It became clear to me that the only real cost effective way to fund energy efficiency projects was to bring in and try to get the local banks engaged in providing funding. Otherwise the cost to capital was just way too high to do it on a totally equity basis. Based on that, I started back in the early 2000’s trying to come up with a mechanism of how to bring the local banks into the funding and financing of energy efficiency projects. It became clear to me when I went into all of these different countries that there were common methodologies, common ways for efficiency projects to be evaluated and to be funded. It was also clear to me that the banks had essentially had very little knowledge or capacity on how to evaluate and how to look at finding projects which is really what was the foundation for me to really initiate the idea of an international energy efficiency financial protocol. I did this back in July 2004. The U.N. foundation’s energy future collation sponsored a state quarter workshop in D.C. which represented a broad group of experts in energy efficiency finance and the primary focus was to discuss the barriers to increase use of funds for energy efficiency projects. I threw out this idea of an energy efficiency international financing protocol and they agreed that the local banks clearly lacked guidance and expertise in order to lend money to it and this was a good program, if you will, to start setting up around the world. That was the actual genesis of the IEEFP. Nathan: Sounds like