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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

OAKLAND, May 7, 2019 — WattTime today announced a new project, funded by a $1.7 million grant from Google.org, which will use a global network of satellites to measure carbon emissions from all large power plants worldwide and render the information public. WattTime and a group of other collaborating environmental nonprofits chosen through the Google AI Impact Challenge aim to use the resulting data both to hold polluting plants accountable to environmental standards, as well as to enable advanced new emissions reduction technologies.

WattTime previously pioneered solutions such as Automated Emissions Reduction (AER), which leverages past, present, and forecasted power grid emissions data and machine learning algorithms to allow smart devices to adjust the timing of their energy use to sync with clean energy and avoid dirty energy. The organization is spearheading this new endeavor to develop a global continuous emissions monitoring system that is more granular, accurate, and comprehensive than anything that has existed before.

“We received thousands of applications to the Google AI Impact Challenge and are excited to be supporting WattTime with funding and expertise from Google,” said Jacquelline Fuller, president of Google.org. “AI is at a nascent stage when it comes to the value it can have for the social impact sector, and we look forward to seeing the outcomes of this work and considering where there is potential for us to do even more.”

Joining WattTime in the collaboration are nonprofits Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank that analyzes the economic impacts of the energy transition and the first organization to pioneer satellite-based power plant monitoring; and World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organization working to secure a more sustainable future and who maintains the most comprehensive Global Database of Power Plants in existence today.

The upcoming project will work by leveraging the growing global satellite network to observe power plants from space. AI technology will use the latest image processing algorithms to detect signs of power plant emissions. For maximum accuracy, the project will combine data from a variety of different sensors operating at different wavelengths. AI algorithms will cross-validate multiple indicators of power plant emissions, from thermal infrared indicating heat near smoke stacks and cooling water intake, to visual spectrum recognition that a power plant is emitting smoke.

“Far too many power companies worldwide currently shroud their pollution in secrecy. But through the growing power of AI, our little coalition of nonprofits is about to lift that veil all over the world, all at once,” said Gavin McCormick, executive director of WattTime. “To think that today a little team like ours can use emerging AI remote sensing techniques to hold every powerful polluter worldwide accountable is pretty incredible. But what I really love about better data is how it puts most companies, governments, and environmentalists on the same side. We’ve been thrilled to see how many responsible, forward-thinking groups have started using advanced data to voluntarily slash emissions without anyone making them.”

Fossil fuel emissions are the largest single driver of climate change, and also lead to millions of deaths each year from air pollution exposure. Although a few wealthy countries today currently track emissions from some power plants using expensive continuous emissions monitoring systems, the vast majority of power plants worldwide are not continuously tracked, complicating environmental regulation and making advanced pollution control techniques impossible. With millions of tons of pollution likely going unreported, WattTime and its partners plan to jointly enable a variety of different emissions reductions techniques in a single project, and their satellite-provided 'eyes in the sky’ will ensure that power plant emissions have nowhere to hide.

Accurate global emissions data has the ability to inspire everything from local environmental activism, to new and effective environmental policy, to verification that countries are achieving national-level emissions targets such as Paris Accord commitments. In their ongoing work, WattTime also plans to use the information to further enable and refine software that can give billions of internet-connected devices emissions reduction capabilities.

With work well underway, WattTime has already collected a significant amount of data, confirmed the feasibility of the methodologies, and developed a network of users who could apply the emissions data for greater impact.

“The more transparency we can provide for energy consumers around the world, the more likely we are to solve some of the monumental challenges facing our planet,” said Johannes Friedrich, a senior associate at WRI. “We believe this project will help bring the world one huge step closer to meeting urgent carbon reduction goals, and we’re proud to be a part of it.”

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. For more information, please visit WattTime.org.

About Carbon Tracker

Carbon Tracker is an independent financial think tank that carries out in-depth analysis on the impact of the energy transition on financial markets and the potential investment in high-cost, carbon-intensive fossil fuels. Its team of financial market, energy and legal experts apply groundbreaking research using leading industry databases to map both risk and opportunity for investors on the path to a low-carbon future. It has cemented the terms “carbon bubble”, “unburnable carbon” and “stranded assets” into the financial and environmental lexicon.

About World Resources Institute 

WRI is a global research organization that spans more than 60 countries, with offices in Brazil, China, Europe, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the United States and more. Our more than 800 experts and staff work closely with leaders to turn big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity and human well-being. More information at www.wri.org. 

Media Contact

Nicole Arnone
Client and Media Relations Manager
nicolearnone@inflectionpointagency.com