Macquarie’s Green Investment Group (GIG), Siemens’ Smart Infrastructure (SI) and Financial Services (SFS) groups today announced the formation of Calibrant Energy (Calibrant), a joint venture that offers comprehensive onsite Energy as a Service (EaaS) solutions at no up-front cost for its customers, which include corporate and industrial clients, as well as municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals.
Combining the efforts of two global energy technology and infrastructure companies, Calibrant Energy will simplify the transition toward energy decarbonization for US corporations and institutions by planning, designing, building, owning, and operating clients’ energy production and storage assets. It will offer a unique combination of technical, operating, and risk management expertise that will enable customers to access the benefits of on-site energy systems with a new level of simplicity. Using an EaaS model, Calibrant will build onsite energy solutions that seek to deliver immediate cost savings, cost certainty, resilience and low-cost energy grid augmentation. Calibrant’s technologies will include solar, integrated solar-battery solutions, hybrid systems, standalone batteries, microgrids, combined heat and power, and centralized heating and cooling infrastructure upgrades.
Calibrant aims to utilize Macquarie’s capital and Siemens’ technology, as it competes to grow in the space. According to a June forecast from consultancy Wood Mackenzie, around $110 billion of investment could be made in distributed energy in the period 2020-2025.
“Many companies and institutions are embarking on a green transition in their energy strategies to take advantage of lower cost, lower emissions and increased resilience. Due to our shared vision and complementary expertise, GIG viewed Siemens as the ideal partner in forming Calibrant Energy to work closely with clients to deliver simple, customized, fully managed energy solutions,” said Chris Archer, GIG’s Head of Americas. “With industry-leading technology, deep sector expertise and flexible financing capabilities, Calibrant is well positioned to be a transformative leader in distributed energy and accelerate the transition toward a greener economy.”
Other professional investment firms are also seeking to tap into distributed energy. Last month, Blackstone Group launched its own platform. Carlyle Group and BlackRock Inc have such joint ventures with Schneider Electric and General Electric respectively.
REGlobal’s Views: Electricity generation is forecast to increasingly move away from traditional structures involving large fossil fuel-burning power plants, towards localized systems using renewable energy and battery storage, known as distributed energy. For entities embracing this model, they can choose to ‘outsource’ their power systems to a specialist entity, in the same way firms hire technology platforms rather than develop their own systems – so-called software-as-a-service (SaaS).
