This article explores the importance of energy performance contracts as a key tool for improving energy efficiency, demonstrating their special role in today’s economic and legal environment. The author identifies and analyses in detail the shortcomings of the current legislative definition of an energy performance contract, noting that the ambiguity and limitations of the regulatory definition have created legal uncertainty, contributing to conflicts between private and public interests, particularly in the context of government procurement. This paper substantiates the position that an energy performance contract, by its very nature, represents a special contractual structure, as energy performance activities can be implemented within contracts with various purposes – supply, contracting, leasing, and rental. The paper also substantiates the position on the need for legislative amendments to the definition of an energy performance contract. The article demonstrates that the proposed changes to the definition of an energy performance contract could create a more predictable and favourable regulatory environment for lighting equipment manufacturers. Shifting the emphasis from “actions aimed at energy conservation” to the civil law result (delivery of goods, performance of work, provision of services) removes the artificial narrowing of the contract to a contract for the provision of services for a fee and legitimizes the diversity of models, within which lighting modernization projects are actually implemented.
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19. Matveeva, E. Yu. On the issue of bank lending for energy service contracts // Banking law, 2021, # 5, pp. 21–27. DOI 10.18572/1812–3945–2021–5–21–27.

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• energy service contract
• subject of the contract
• legal nature
• special contractual structure
• regulatory definition