GreenFront Energy Partners and WattTime partner to advance emissionality

Joint effort will unlock greater emissions reductions by enabling renewable PPAs to target grid regions where clean energy can displace more fossil-fueled emissions

Wind turbines in agricultural field with WattTime and GreenFront logos

Richmond, Va. and Oakland, Calif.—October 12, 2021—Today clean energy-focused investment banking and advisory firm GreenFront Energy Partners and environmental tech nonprofit WattTime announced a new partnership to advance emissionality as an offering for GreenFront’s clients. Emissionality brings an additional lens to renewable energy procurement, by enabling investors and offtakers to identify which solar and wind projects can achieve the greatest emissions reductions, by displacing more fossil-fueled generation on dirtier grids. This will directly enhance GreenFront’s PPA Advisory practice, which represents corporate buyers in their renewable energy procurement efforts.

“Each energy buyer comes to the table with a different set of goals and priorities for their renewable energy procurement, from economic considerations to social and community impact, to environmental variables,” explained Adam Hahn, GreenFront Energy Partners. “But more and more, we’re seeing growing emphasis on maximizing beneficial climate impact, by signing renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) for those solar and wind projects that achieve greater emissions reductions. Through our partnership with WattTime, we’re able to bring industry-leading emissionality insights to our clients.”

GreenFront and WattTime previously collaborated in support of Nucor, the largest steel producer in North America. GreenFront’s PPA Advisory helped Nucor evaluate a large portfolio of responses to its renewable energy RFP, and brought in WattTime to conduct an emissionality analysis to better understand the avoided emissions benefits of a set of finalists. WattTime has also worked with organizations ranging from Boston University to Salesforce to incorporate emissionality into their renewables procurement strategies.

“The growing adoption of emissionality is an exciting trend in corporate renewables procurement,” said Laura Corso, managing director of partnerships at WattTime. “Companies looking to maximize the emissions-reduction benefits of their renewable energy investments understand that not all solar and wind projects are created equally. We couldn’t be more excited for this partnership with GreenFront . With the urgency of the climate crisis, GreenFront is better-positioned than ever to help their clients focus their investments where they can achieve impact.”

For more information about emissionality and GreenFront’s PPA Advisory practice, please visit www.greenfrontenergy.com.

About GreenFront Energy Partners
GreenFront Energy Partners is an investment banking firm that specializes in alternative energy financial advisory. GreenFront’s service offering includes buy-side and sell-side M&A advisory and debt and equity capital raising, as well as PPA advisory services.

About WattTime
WattTime is an environmental tech nonprofit that empowers all people, companies, policymakers, and countries to slash emissions and choose cleaner energy. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers, we develop data-driven tools and policies that increase environmental and social good, including Automated Emissions Reduction and emissionality. WattTime is also the convening member and cofounder of the global Climate TRACE coalition. During the energy transition from a fossil-fueled past to a zero-carbon future, WattTime ‘bends the curve’ of emissions reductions to realize deeper, faster benefits for people and the planet.

Nest Renew from Google harnesses WattTime tech to help Nest thermostat users to prioritize clean energy automatically

Oakland, Calif.—October 6, 2021—Ever since smart thermostats first hit the market over a decade ago, Google’s Nest series has consistently remained an industry leader on ‘best’ lists. Today environmental tech nonprofit WattTime announced that it has partnered with Nest Renew from Google to help make it easier to participate in energy programs and support a clean energy future. This new service for compatible Nest thermostats is rolling out in early preview by invitation in the coming weeks.

Since 2011, Google estimates that Nest thermostats have reduced customers’ energy use by more than 80 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). That’s in large part through energy conservation, such as automatically switching into ‘away’ mode when Nest detects that a residence is unoccupied. It’s also through Rush Hour Rewards, Nest’s residential demand response program, which is now active in over 80 markets across the country.

Nest Renew goes a step further. It was built on the premise that Nest thermostats can do more than just help use less energy, but also help support power grids in running on clean energy. Powered by WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) signal, Nest Renew helps users automatically shift their heating and cooling electricity use to times when energy is cleaner, such as when there’s surplus solar or wind energy on the nearby power grid. This practice can help avoid emissions and also support the growth of clean energy.

Nest Renew subscribers will also have access to a near real-time view of the marginal carbon intensity of their grid, helping them understand how grid emissions change throughout the day and empowering them to make more informed choices about when to use energy at home.

“Electricity isn’t always the same: it’s powered by cleaner sources at some times versus others. But it’s not as if wall outlets come labeled with which times are which,” said Gavin McCormick, executive director of WattTime. “Nest Renew from Google is a gamechanger on this front in two important ways: For one, it’s making it transparent when exactly energy is cleaner on our power grids. But also, it’s doing something really remarkable by making it possible for thermostat users to automatically adjust their usage to support clean energy without interrupting our daily routines or compromising comfort. I’m amazed by how effortless it is.”

Air conditioning alone accounts for 10% of all U.S. electricity demand. This makes the Nest Renew from Google announcement an exciting opportunity, both for educating and empowering customers, and for supporting the U.S. power grid’s move towards operating on renewable energy. Electricity use and any associated pollution is no longer a ‘take it or leave it’ proposition for customers. They now have greater ability to choose which electricity they want to use, based on how clean it is at different times. WattTime analysis shows widespread adoption of AER technology worldwide could reduce over 3.3 billion tons of CO₂ by 2030.

Nest Renew Basic will be available across the continental U.S., with Nest Renew Premium in select U.S. markets and expanding over time. For more information, visit the Nest Renew from Google website.

Nest Renew requires the 3rd generation Nest Learning Thermostat, Nest Thermostat E, or the newest Nest Thermostat connected to a Google account (sold separately). Features based on WattTime AER will be available in areas served by major continental U.S. grids. Some Nest Renew features require a Nest Renew $10/month subscription. Available in select locations.

WHITE PAPER: To Drive More Authentic Impact, Faster, Look at the Consequences of Your Choices and Actions

Let’s face it. The latest UN International Panel on Climate Change report is grim. Our planet is in real trouble.

But as the sheer magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis becomes ever clearer, we at WattTime see one piece of real genuine hope on the horizon. Over the past year, there has been a quiet sea change in corporations and other institutions starting to ask what the true emissions benefits of their strategies, investments, and actions are.

Because it is so critical that organizations succeed in this important goal, we are proud to partner with the other leading global provider of highly detailed electricity emissions data, in writing a new joint briefing on this issue. Together with Tomorrow, the folks who created Electricity Map, we’re jointly releasing A vision for how ambitious organizations can accurately measure electricity emissions to take genuine action. We focus specifically on the emissions associated with electricity, commonly referred to as Scope 2 emissions in GHG reporting.

What’s in the briefing? Long story short: to measure GHG emissions from electricity, organizations somewhat surprisingly face two different questions. And spoiler alert: one of those questions is more important than the other when it comes to measuring true impact and achieving larger system-wide emissions reductions sooner. Those two questions are:

What is the carbon footprint associated with an organization’s electricity use?
What is the carbon impact on global emissions as a result of different sustainability actions/interventions that they have been or could be undertaking?

At first glance, these might appear to be variations on the same question. But answering them accurately requires using two different frameworks: the attributional framework (answering the first question) and the consequential framework (answering the second). And it turns out that the seemingly subtle difference between these two frameworks actually really matters.

The attributional framework (most often associated with the scope emissions in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard) accounts for an entity’s emissions inventory or footprint. It essentially focuses on assigning responsibility for emissions to different institutions.

But it doesn’t always provide as much insight on how to fix climate change. Because by relentlessly focusing on only the emissions that a company “owns”, the attributional framework can leave us blind to the effect of one organization’s actions on actual global emissions outside of that organization’s boundary. That’s where the consequential framework comes in.

The consequential framework quantifies the actual emissions impact of different actions or interventions, allowing organizations to optimize their investments to achieve greater real-world emissions reductions. Whether it’s deciding when to use electricity, where to site a wind farm, or even adopting energy efficiency measures, these choices affect other grid users, too. So, when one is looking at emissions data and deciding what to do, whether one considers the global emissions effect or not can actually heavily change what strategies look best.

Consider a company that is based in a grid powered entirely by natural gas. If it moved part of its operation to a grid that is powered 2/3 by nuclear, and 1/3 by coal, what happened to its emissions? From an attributional perspective, it has lowered its own carbon footprint because it has the right to claim a share of that clean nuclear energy in its carbon accounting. But from a consequential perspective, will the nuclear power plants change their output to accommodate the newcomer? Not likely. It’s the coal plants that will ramp up to power the newcomer. So total global emissions will actually go up, not down.

“Only one thing will stop climate change: if all of us collectively somehow find a way to lower total global emissions by about 36 billion tons of CO2 each year. The fact is, my avoided emissions help you and yours help me. And optimizing sustainability strategies to measure and maximize the emissions consequences of our actions for everyone, doesn’t just affect our own individual inventories, it can often make it possible for sustainability teams to generate around 2 to 3 times as much real-world emissions savings for the same total cost and effort,” said Gavin McCormick, WattTime Executive Director.

When measuring electricity emissions, the GHG Protocol stipulates that companies must report their inventory using the attributional framework (e.g. GHGP Corporate Standard), and may also report their avoided emissions using the consequential framework (e.g. GHGP Project Protocol). At Tomorrow and WattTime, we recommend measuring and reporting both while seeking to utilize the most scientifically sound methods available to do so. The consequential framework can help organizations maximize the real world emissions benefit of their actions.

"Attributional and consequential methods are both necessary for managing responsibility, yet to date attributional methods have been the dominant focus for companies' GHG reporting," explains Matthew Brander, senior lecturer in carbon accounting at the University of Edinburgh. "But in today's day and age, corporations are increasingly focused on ensuring that their actions and investments achieve bigger and faster emissions reductions, not just for their own carbon footprint, but for the system as a whole. That's where consequential methods can add real insight to their strategies."

"Consequential and attributional accounting are complicated concepts that are sometimes conflated," added Olivier Corradi, founder and CEO of Tomorrow. "Given the recently increased ambitions of major organisations and governments, we felt the urge to create a document that acts as a guide for organisations that want to drive real and tangible impact. It felt important to partner up with WattTime in order to have a strong and unified voice on the topic."

To learn more, please download the white paper.

CPower Partners with WattTime to Supercharge Emissions-reduction Benefits of Demand Response

Baltimore and Oakland, Calif.— April 22, 2021— Today, in recognition of the 51^st anniversary of Earth Day, CPower Energy Management (“CPower”) and nonprofit WattTime jointly announced a partnership to evaluate and strengthen the emissions-reduction benefits of CPower’s demand response solutions. CPower is a leading, national energy solutions provider that serves more than 1,700 commercial and industrial customers across more than 11,000 sites and manages more than 4 gigawatts (GW) of electricity load across North American utilities and energy markets. WattTime is the inventor of Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), software intelligence that allows utilities, IoT device and energy storage companies, and end users to shift the timing of flexible electricity use to sync with times of cleaner energy and avoid times of dirtier energy.

In 2020, CPower customers curtailed their grid demand in nearly 20,000 events spread across six independent system operator (ISO) regions, totaling 11.5 GWh of load reduction, when the grid needed it most. Based on WattTime analysis, this corresponded to an emissions reduction of nearly 7,000 metric tons CO₂ on average for demand response events. This is equivalent to eliminating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with more than 7 million pounds of coal burned.

“In these cases, demand response was dispatched primarily for economic or grid reliability purposes. Even then, our analysis showed that CPower’s load curtailment solutions achieved significant emissions reductions through reduced demand on high-emitting resources,” explained Gavin McCormick, Executive Director of WattTime. “Looking forward, we’re especially excited about what more is possible in partnership with CPower. For example, increasing demand response dispatch to include additional events based on a marginal GHG signal—versus purely an economic or grid reliability signal—could further increase emissions savings.”

John Horton, President and CEO, CPower, added: “As a company, our demand-side management solutions span demand response, energy efficiency, distributed generation, energy storage, and peak load reduction. They all have roles to play decarbonizing power grids as part of the low-carbon energy transition. In partnership with WattTime, we’ll be exploring how we can deliver even stronger emissions-reduction benefits to our customers throughout North America.”

About CPower Energy Management
CPower Energy Management is a leading, national energy solutions provider guiding customers towards a clean and dependable energy future. We maximize the value of our customers' electricity loads, facility assets and distributed energy resources. Since launching in 2007, we’ve grown to offer more than 50 local energy programs partnering with grid operators and utilities to more than 11,000 sites across North America, delivering approximately 7,000 metric tons of CO2 reductions in 2020 alone. Our presence across five deregulated utility markets allows us to manage more than 4.2 GW of customer capacity and provide energy to the grid in North America when it's needed most. CPower is based in Baltimore, Maryland and is owned by LS Power, a development, investment and operating company focused on the power and energy infrastructure sector. For more information, visit: www.cpowerenergymanagement.com.

About WattTime
WattTime empowers global citizens—people, organizations, utilities, countries—to slash emissions and use cleaner energy. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers and now a subsidiary of RMI, we are a modern-day hybrid of an environmental nonprofit and cutting-edge software company. We research and develop data-driven tools that increase environmental and social good. We invented Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), software that allows IoT devices like smart thermostats and electric vehicles to effortlessly and automatically run on cleaner energy. We popularized emissionality, a technique to achieve greater avoided emissions from new renewable energy projects. And we co-founded the global coalition Climate TRACE, enabling more meaningful climate action by harnessing remote sensing and software intelligence to independently monitor human-caused GHG emissions in near real time. During the massive energy transition from a fossil-fueled past to a zero-carbon future, WattTime ‘bends the curve’ to realize deeper, faster emissions reductions that benefit people and planet.

Contact
Peter Bronski, Inflection Point Agency for WattTime
+1.201.575.5545 | peterbronski@inflectionpointagency.com

Amy Nunnemacher
Senior Mgr, Corp Communications and Media, CPower
720-617-0877 | pr@cpowerenergymanagement.com

WattTime Executive Director Gavin McCormick named to Environment+Energy Leader 100 List

Oakland, Calif.—11 December 2020—Today WattTime announced that co-founder and executive director Gavin McCormick has been named to the 2020 Environment+Energy Leader 100 list (E+E 100). This fourth annual E+E 100 recognizes “those environment and energy ‘doers’ who break trail in creating new solutions, programs, platforms, best practices and products to help their companies—or other companies—achieve greater success in commercial and industrial environment and energy management.”

“There are so many smart, passionate people doing great work in the broad arena of corporate sustainability. I’m honored to be in their company as part of the 2020 list,” said McCormick. “But this is really more a testament to the work of the entire team at WattTime—and our partners. Today’s era of climate action seems to be increasingly driven by team collaboration, like the hundreds of scientists around the world from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.”

This year’s diverse honorees come from companies representing the energy sector (3Degrees, Ameresco, Edison Energy, Enel, Public Service Company of New Mexico, Schneider Electric), transportation (Airbus, Cathay Pacific, General Motors, Rivian), finance (Mastercard, Wells Fargo), food and beverage (Anheuser-Busch, Clif Bar, HEB, Jackson Family Wines, Kroger, Perdue Farms, Tim Hortons, Xanterra), big box and virtual retailers (Amazon, The Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart), NGOs (Billion Oyster Project, Carbon Disclosure Project, World Resources Institute), and beyond (Comcast NBCUniversal, DaVita, Procter & Gamble, Trane, Verizon, Whirlpool).

McCormick’s E+E 100 recognition comes on the heels of Climate TRACE—of which WattTime is a cofounder—being named to TIME’s list of Best Inventions of 2020.

About WattTime
WattTime is a nonprofit with a software tech startup DNA, dedicated to giving everyone everywhere the power to choose clean energy. We invented Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), which allows utilities, IoT device and energy storage companies, and any end user to effortlessly reduce emissions from energy, when and where they happen. Our cutting-edge insights and algorithms, coupled with machine learning, can shift the timing of flexible electricity use to sync with times of cleaner energy and avoid times of dirtier energy. We sell solutions that make it easy for anyone to achieve emissions reductions without compromising cost and user experience. WattTime was founded by PhD researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 became a subsidiary of Rocky Mountain Institute. WattTime is a founding member of Climate TRACE, a global coalition working together to monitor nearly all human-caused GHG emissions worldwide independently and in real time.

CONTACT
Peter Bronski, Inflection Point Agency for WattTIme+1.201.575.5545 | peterbronski@inflectionpointagency.com

WattTime Partners with Salesforce to Incorporate ‘Emissionality’ into Renewable Energy Procurement Strategy

Oakland, Calif.—October 21, 2020—Today environmental tech nonprofit WattTime announced that Salesforce.com, Inc. (Salesforce) has begun incorporating emissionality, a practice developed by the nonprofit, as a key criteria in its renewable energy procurement strategy. Emissionality is a technique to make large-scale renewable energy projects even more impactful by deliberately siting them in locations where building new renewables displaces particularly polluting power plants. This strategic shift is highlighted in Salesforce’s new white paper, More Than A Megawatt: Embedding Social & Environmental Impact in the Renewable Energy Procurement Process. WattTime previously applied the emissionality approach with Boston University and others to help the university maximize the positive impact of a renewable energy power purchase agreement.

“Since 2012, the scientific consensus has been clear that some renewable energy projects drive up to three times more positive environmental impact than others. Salesforce just became the first major renewable energy buyer to publicly outline how it is incorporating that science into its renewable procurement decision-making,” said Gavin McCormick, WattTime Executive Director. “This is an incredibly heartening development for environmentalists everywhere. It makes sense it would be Salesforce. They were an early leader in the corporate renewable energy movement—setting a 100% renewable energy target back in 2013—and now they’ve stepped out in front once again with a compelling articulation of the role of emissionality in the renewable energy procurement process.”

Emissionality works by analyzing what will happen on the grid in response to different potential new renewable energy projects being built. One of the most-important factors is the location-specific grid mix where new renewable capacity is built and how their addition influences avoided emissions and human health benefits from displacing dirty fossil-fueled generation. Based on analysis from WattTime and other organizations, Salesforce will now consider which potential purchases would have the greatest benefit to the environment and human health—among several important criteria—before making renewable energy purchases. Because some projects can be far more environmentally beneficial than others, this approach will make it possible for Salesforce to ‘supercharge’ the environmental impact of every renewable energy purchase the company makes.

For example, a recent WattTime analysis found that electricity from a solar project built in West Virginia could have 3x greater impact than electricity from an almost identical project built in California. If widely adopted, the technique has potential to drive considerable environmental impact. A separate WattTime analysis found that if forecasted new renewable energy capacity worldwide began deliberately building in the highest-impact locations, this change would save a United States’ worth of emissions.

“As a company, we’ve been taking a hard look at what makes ‘the best’ renewable energy project,” explained Megan Lorenzen, sustainability manager at Salesforce. “Purchasing renewable energy is about much more than adding new megawatts of renewable energy to the grid. It's about improving the state of the world, which includes considering a number of factors such as land use impacts, wildlife impacts, equity issues, community benefits, and WattTime’s emissionality work, which spans both avoided emissions from a climate perspective and human health considerations for air pollution.”

Salesforce partnered with WattTime, the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, CERES, the Nature Conservancy, and others on its More Than A Megawatt strategy.

About WattTime
WattTime is a nonprofit with a software tech startup DNA, dedicated to giving everyone everywhere the power to choose cleaner energy. We invented Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), a technique to reduce the carbon footprint of IoT devices and energy storage equipment; and pioneered emissionality, a technique to increase the emissions benefits of renewable energy.

We power these technologies with cutting-edge insights and algorithms, coupled with machine learning, to shift the timing and place of electricity use and generation to better line up with times and places where it drives the most impact.

WattTime was founded by PhD researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 became a subsidiary of Rocky Mountain Institute. WattTime is a founding member of Climate TRACE, a global coalition working together to monitor nearly all human-caused GHG emissions worldwide independently and in real time.

CONTACT
Peter Bronski, Inflection Point Agency for WattTime
1.201.575.5545 | peterbronski@inflectionpointagency.com

Image: Denys Nevozhai | Unsplash

Building Owners & Controls Providers: Help Us Clean Up The Great Lakes

In the coming months, WattTime, with the Great Lakes Protection Fund, UC Berkeley, and other partners, will be rolling out a pilot program to test the deployment of enhanced demand response programs throughout the Great Lakes Region. As a part of this pilot, we’re seeking a small group of commercial building owners who want to be able to choose clean energy in real-time, automatically. As early adopters for the program, you’ll gain this capability at no cost with just a software update to your existing control system. If your building is in a state that touches one of the Great Lakes (or your commercial HVAC/building controls company serves those buildings), you may be eligible.

We’re partnering with building owners and property managers who want a choice about where their power comes from. Choosing to use AER is a choice to use cleaner electricity. AER will automatically make small adjustments to reduce your emissions throughout the day, all year long. Sign up today.
We’re also partnering with building controls companies (e.g. automation, HVAC, lighting, analytics) who are interested in providing their customers the power to choose cleaner electricity. Contact us if you’d like to discuss the details.

WattTime lets you choose where your power comes from

WattTime invented automated emissions reduction (AER) to give electricity users the ability to choose the source of their power. WattTime measures the real-time emissions of your local power grid to determine how clean or dirty the responding generator is at the moment you flip on a switch. The answer can change every five minutes. Using WattTime’s forecast, your devices, homes, and buildings can automatically shift energy use to the cleanest moments throughout the day. AER is in use today by many devices like EV chargers, batteries, thermostats, appliances, smart plugs, and more. So if you want to be able to choose whether you use clean or dirty electricity, now you can, by using AER (learn more about AER).

Buildings can reduce Great Lakes pollution

Since 2015, WattTime and GLPF have been working to eliminate mercury and other pollution from the power sector by providing a powerful economic signal which will encourage clean energy generation and hasten the early retirement of dirty coal plants. Buildings are the next key piece of this puzzle. We’re scaling up the impact of our technology beyond EV charging and smart devices by expanding our capability to include commercial HVAC.

Early next year, WattTime will run a pilot demonstration of AER in a commercial building and measure the pollution reduction potential (a collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment). We will then share the results with utilities in the Great Lakes region (eg. ComEd, Xcel Energy, Great River Energy, DTE Energy, Consumers Energy) and beyond, in support of new incentive programs which will make AER more widely available.

The commercial building pilot is an important step towards bringing clean energy choice to everyone. By choosing cleaner energy for our homes and businesses, our collective action will add up to drastic reductions in pollution. For example, our two-phase project could lead to the elimination of 269 pounds of mercury annually in the Great Lakes region. We’ve previously discussed why reducing mercury pollution in the Great Lakes region is so important for health outcomes.

But why do we care?

Health and environmental justice are intertwined, with the COVID-19 epidemic making that connection ever more stark and clear. With over a million deaths from the virus worldwide, we must not forget that health in lower-income communities is disproportionately affected not only by viruses, but by local environmental pollution which puts these populations at greater risk to increasingly frequent and coincident disasters.

New research from the State University of New York and ProPublica, as well as The New York Times, suggests that areas with bad air pollution have higher rates of COVID-19. Meanwhile, EPA enforcement has been cut back during the pandemic, leading to spikes in toxic emissions in some areas. Another recent study showed that asthma hospitalizations dropped in Kentucky after coal-fired power plants went offline.

This project focuses a lens on harmful pollutants emitted by coal-fired power plants, because every state that touches the Great Lakes has an interest in keeping their people safe with clean air and water. And, as the people who are directly impacted, we—and our buildings—can do something to help.

HERE'S HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Building Partners

We’re partnering with building owners and property managers who want a choice about where their power comes from. Choosing to use AER is a choice to use cleaner electricity. AER will automatically make small adjustments to reduce your emissions throughout the day, all year long. Sign up today.

Benefits

Gain capability to flex energy usage based on your choice of clean or dirty energy
Ability to reduce your pollution footprint, contributing to your environmental goals (and improving local health outcomes)
Get reports on your pollution reductions (CO2, mercury, SO2, and NOx)
A case study highlighting your building which you can share with your tenants and industry peers (if desired)

What will be needed from you?

Introduce WattTime to your HVAC and building controls provider(s)
Ask your controls provider for AER functionality for your existing system (no cost to you, and no new hardware to be installed)
Provide feedback about the experience during the pilot (early 2021)

Controls Partners

We’re also partnering with building controls companies (e.g. automation, HVAC, lighting, analytics) who are interested in providing their customers the power to choose cleaner electricity. Contact us if you’d like to discuss the details.

Benefits

Reach new commercial building customers, based on environmental value proposition
Add value to your existing customers without adding any new hardware
Further enhance load flexibility/optimization features with help from Watttime and CBE
AER capability will give you access to upcoming utility programs for enhanced Demand Response
Appear as a featured partner in our case study

What will be needed from you?

Pull real-time data from WattTime by API
Incorporate this signal into your operational optimization
Provide operational data back to WattTime for evaluation

How coronavirus exposed the importance of marginal emissions

Roughly nine months into the global coronavirus pandemic, much has been written about the temporary—and potentially lasting—emissions reductions that have come along with stay-at-home orders and a deep economic recession. DNV GL’s recently released Energy Transitions Outlook 2020 forecasts 75 gigatons of avoided CO₂ emissions through 2050, mostly thanks to a big slump in energy demand that resets the trajectory of annual global emissions.

But a closer look at power grids and how they responded to falling demand shows that there’s more to the story—with implications for how we think about more-effective ways for slashing the emissions associated with our energy use.

WattTime analyst Christy Lewis focused her spotlight on the greater New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York, one of the early hotspots for COVID-19 in the United States. The New York City metro area—currently hosting its annual Climate Week—was hit hard and went into aggressive lockdown. What happened next in that region of the NYISO power grid was revealing.

Let’s zoom in to late March and early April 2020. Although just six months ago on the calendar, in ‘coronavirus time,’ that feels like it was eons ago. For context, the week spanning the March-April transition was also precisely when public interest in Netflix’s Tiger King peaked, which feels like it happened last century, so there’s that.

By March, the pandemic had already been sweeping around the world, with global financial markets starting to tumble. On March 20, California became the first U.S. state to order its residents into stay-at-home lockdown. New York State followed two days later, on March 22. The story of life—and the economy—under lockdown is probably all-too-familiar to you already. But what transpired on New York’s power grid?

Answer: something curious.

Coronavirus emissions graph in New York City

For most of March, the rolling 7-day average of daily electricity demand and daily grid emissions tracked essentially in parallel. A ~7% drop in average daily load was accompanied by a similar ~7% drop in average daily grid emissions. Then the two curves diverged sharply. The next 7% decline in average daily load came along with a whopping 45% drop in average daily emissions. So what happened?

The answer lies in marginal generators and marginal emissions rates, and what they contributed to overall daily emissions.

New York is a state with bold decarbonization targets: 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040 and a net-zero-carbon economy by 2050. But it’s not there yet. While upstate New York has made great strides with zero-emissions generation (mostly modern renewables such as wind and solar), downstate New York remains heavily dependent on fossil-fueled generation, which accounted for 69% of energy generation in 2019.

Yet as electricity demand rises or falls (mostly the latter, in this era of coronavirus), not all generators respond to that fluctuating demand like a swelling or receding of the tides in New York Harbor. Specific generators—the ones that are sitting ‘on the margin’ of demand—turn on or off, or ramp up or down, to maintain the supply-demand balance.

What we saw happening in those weeks of March and April was the byproduct of a simple fact of grid dispatch order: as electricity demand continued falling through late March and then into April, the marginal generators that were turning off were by and large the polluting, fossil-fueled ones. Even though demand declined gradually, New York’s downstate grid got a lot cleaner in the process. Data from WattTime’s analysis confirms as much: Throughout the first month of New York’s stay-at-home order, carbon-free generation remained a stalwart, supplying 7,500 to 8,500+ megawatts (MW) of capacity each day. Meanwhile, fossil-fueled generation plummeted, from supplying 5,500 MW of daily generating capacity at the start of lockdown to just 3,500 MW by mid-April.

So with economies around the country and around the world trying to rebound (or at least wanting to), what do we do with this insight? As energy demand climbs alongside economic activity, are we destined to see carbon emissions rise, too? Not necessarily.

In the same way that New York’s electricity demand and associated grid emissions decoupled in late March and early April thanks to the influence of marginal generators, so too do real-time grid emissions fluctuate all the time, not just during pandemic-induced global economic recessions. Every time you flick a light switch, plug in an electric vehicle to charge, schedule the battery from a residential solar+storage system in California to discharge… a marginal generator responds. And whether that marginal generator is surplus renewable energy or a polluting peaker plant can have a big influence on the emissions your energy use causes. Such fluctuations are most pronounced in grid regions amidst their fossil-to-renewable energy transition, where there’s a mix of clean and dirty generation.

Solutions like WattTime’s Automated Emissions Reduction (AER) technology harness this insight and convert it into a software signal that allows smart devices—thermostats, EVs, batteries, heat pumps, etc.—to sync their demand with moments of clean energy and avoid moments of dirty energy. Adopted at scale, it makes the kind of huge emissions reductions that downstate New York saw earlier this year achievable anytime, anywhere.

We didn't need a global pandemic to find new examples of the deeper, faster emissions reductions right in front of us, but, well, here we are. Let's do something about it.

Image: Emiliano Bar | Unsplash

DNV GL and WattTime Announce Strategic Partnership: Integrating GHG Emissions and Energy Data to Accelerate a Clean Energy Future

People on the roof of a building with DNV GL and WattTime logos

DNV GL and WattTime Announce Strategic Partnership: Integrating GHG Emissions and Energy Data to Accelerate a Clean Energy FutureOakland, Calif.—17 September 2020—Today DNV GL and WattTime jointly announced a strategic partnership to incorporate WattTime’s emissions intelligence into DNV GL’s energy management and digital services expertise for renewables, storage, and efficiency. By combining data on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions with energy efficiency, battery charging and discharging, demand response, and renewables, DNV GL’s utility, regulatory, and renewable and storage project owner clients can make decisions to deliver the greatest clean energy impact. WattTime pioneered Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), a software solution that allows smart devices to sync their flexible electricity use with times of cleaner generation and avoid times of dirtier energy, as well as ‘emissionality,’ which calculates the avoided emissions of different renewable energy projects based on where they are built and what fossil-fueled generation they displace.

“WattTime brings unparalleled expertise to the table when it comes to understanding the GHG implications of electricity supply and demand. This partnership will empower our clients to better evaluate the environmental impacts of their energy use decisions,” explained Richard S. Barnes, Region President, Energy North America at DNV GL.

The partnership comes on the heels of the release earlier this month of DNV GL’s Energy Transition Outlook 2020. The findings in the latest edition of the eagerly anticipated annual analysis and forecast were a call to action on the climate crisis: The necessary technologies for the world to meet Paris Agreement targets exist, if successfully scaled, but current emissions trajectories will fall far short. Under DNV GL’s forecast, the world will exhaust its carbon budget for remaining within a 1.5ºC scenario by later this decade.

“We’re proud to partner with DNV GL to inform their work with clients around the world,” said Gavin McCormick, executive director of WattTime. “Electrification and renewable energy integration are cornerstones of their latest forecast. Our insights will enable their customers with choice in the form of understanding the impacts of different energy decisions, be it energy storage or efficiency upgrades. Down the road, our software can give all manner of smart devices the intelligence to automatically use cleaner energy as power grids around the world see bigger real-time emissions fluctuations during this transition period from fossil-fueled to renewable-powered generation.”

From its inception, WattTime has championed the use of marginal rather than average emissions rates as a more-relevant way to understand, evaluate and take action based on the actual environmental impact of particular energy use. DNV GL will be able to incorporate marginal emissions into a variety of analyses and products, including 8760 analyses of different technologies’ annual energy use.

About DNV GL
DNV GL is the independent expert in risk management and quality assurance, operating in more than 100 countries. Through its broad experience and deep expertise DNV GL advances safety and sustainable performance, sets industry benchmarks, and inspires and invents solutions. Whether assessing a new ship design, optimizing the performance of a wind farm, analyzing sensor data from a gas pipeline or certifying a food company’s supply chain, DNV GL enables its customers and their stakeholders to make critical decisions with confidence.

Driven by its purpose, to safeguard life, property, and the environment, DNV GL helps tackle the challenges and global transformations facing its customers and the world today and is a trusted voice for many of the world’s most successful and forward-thinking companies.

DNV GL delivers advisory, certification and testing services to stakeholders in the energy value chain. Our expertise spans energy markets and regulations, onshore and offshore wind and solar power generation, power transmission and distribution grids, energy storage and sustainable energy use. Our experts support customers around the globe in delivering a safe, reliable, efficient, and sustainable energy supply.

Learn more at www.dnvgl.com/power-renewables

Our cutting-edge insights and algorithms, coupled with machine learning, can shift the timing of flexible electricity use to sync with times of cleaner energy and avoid times of dirtier energy. We sell solutions that make it easy for anyone to achieve emissions reductions without compromising cost and user experience.

CONTACT
Bethany Genier, Regional Communications Manager, Energy North America, DNV GL
+1.339.927.8815 | Bethany.Genier@dnvgl.com

Peter Bronski, Inflection Point Agency for WattTime
+1.201.575.5545 | peterbronski@inflectionpointagency.com

Sapient Industries and WattTime partner to add clean energy insight to commercial plug load management

Philadelphia, Pa. and Oakland, Calif.—19 August 2020—Today Sapient Industries, a Philadelphia-based plug load management software company, and WattTime, an environmental tech nonprofit that created automated emissions reduction (AER) software, jointly announced a partnership to help commercial enterprise electricity customers improve their energy efficiency and reduce their environmental impact by using more clean energy and less dirty, fossil-fueled energy.

Together, Sapient and WattTime provide powerful insight into the energy consumption of a commercial building—and the resulting carbon impact. Phase one of the partnership will focus on automated reporting that integrates their two technologies. The combined reports will show how much and when energy is being used, what sources the energy is coming from, and intelligent insights on how to consume less through behavioral shifting and automated controls.

“The Sapient and WattTime partnership demonstrates the impact that technology can have on sustainability efforts in commercial real estate,” said Sapient CEO Martin Koch. “Until now, there was no technology to address energy consumption from plug load at the commercial level. Through our new partnership with WattTime, not only can we reduce energy consumption, but also help shift to cleaner sources.”

Sapient Industries is a market leader in plug load management technology. Sapient’s SaaS enterprise web application accesses, monitors, and controls every single plugged-in device in a building. Using advanced machine learning algorithms, Sapient is able to deliver significant energy savings to clients while also aiding in asset management and enhancing maintenance strategies.

WattTime invented AER technology, which allows smart devices to automatically opt for clean energy, thus reducing emissions resulting from use of the device. Their technology detects the resulting emissions impact of the power that's feeding into the grid at any given moment. WattTime is helping end users of all kinds easily and automatically adjust power use to times when energy is cleanest.

“At WattTime, we’ve consistently seen that achieving energy and emissions reductions are easier than most companies think, if they can just access good real-time data on when and where the biggest opportunities are. We're excited to be working with Sapient to implement AER in the commercial buildings space," added Gavin McCormick, founder and executive director of WattTime. “As more and more companies set renewable energy and emissions-reduction targets, we’re excited that Sapient’s plug-load intelligence can be a powerful tool to drive down emissions, automatically and effortlessly. ”

Sapient and WattTime have already begun to deploy their technologies together in large-scale infrastructure projects.

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About Sapient Industries
Sapient’s SaaS enterprise web application accesses, monitors, and controls every single plugged-in device in a building. With the largest repository of plug load data, Sapient’s machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics improve asset management, reduce energy consumption, and enhance sustainability initiatives.

Learn more at sapient.industries

Learn more at watttime.org

CONTACT
Martin Koch, Sapient Industries
martin@sapient.industries

Peter Bronski, Inflection Point Agency for WattTime
+1.201.575.5545 | peterbronski@inflectionpointagency.com

Image credit: Wes Hicks | Unsplash