In a feature story about LevelTen Energy, CleanTechnica described our Series B funding round and the unprecedented renewable energy portfolio that LevelTen created for Starbucks. Below are excerpts from the article:
Let's say you are the CEO of MidCap, Inc, a small to medium size business that wants to join the renewable energy revolution but doesn't know how. Where do you begin? Look in the yellow pages? Do a Google search? Now let's say you are the CEO of Blustery Skies, a wind and solar power developer. You have a certain amount of renewable energy available, but how do you find customers for it?
LevelTen Energy has the solution. Like brokers in every business, it matches up buyers and sellers so they both get what they want. In return, it gets a piece of the action for itself. Its business model must be working because it has raised over $27 million from investors so far, including $20.5 million recently in a new round of funding.
...The company has developed a price matching and request for proposal automation tool that allows companies to post their own projects and find available projects more efficiently. To date, LevelTen has brokered the acquisition of more than $1 billion worth of renewable energy for clients such as Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, The Gap, Salesforce, and Workday.
...Just last week, LevelTen used its Dynamic Matching tool to arrange a unique renewable energy package for Starbucks - 146 MW of wind and solar that will supply electricity to 3000 stores in the US. According to Green Tech Media, what makes the new project unique is that it aggregates energy from three different renewable energy facilities located in three states - Oklahoma, Texas, and North Carolina - and involving three different grid operators, which is an industry first.
...Colin Smith, a senior solar analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, agrees. "As corporations move toward higher and higher standards of sustainability and carbon-neutrality, they're going to have to do more and more complex deals. This seems to be a good example of that. They obviously thought long and hard about how to structure energy procurement for not just one region or one data center, but for thousands of locations. From that standpoint, it's pretty unique."
Patrick Leonard, Starbucks' energy manager, tells GTM, "Buying renewable energy from multiple projects across the U.S. reflects how we use electricity across our store portfolio. Starbucks' analysis showed a significant reduction in value at risk from the portfolio approach versus sourcing from any one of the projects in the portfolio. Inherently, diversity of technology, location, and developer should all result in a better balance of risks than picking a single project."
...LevelTen likes to say it is likeMatch.comfor the renewable energy marketplace. Its success to date suggests that's a pretty good analogy.
To read the full article, visit CleanTechnica.com.
