Decrease operational costs
Energy as a Service: The Ultimate Guide
What is Energy as a Service (EaaS)?
Energy as a Service(EaaS) is an innovative pay-for-performance model that allows businesses to enjoy the benefits of on-site energy efficiency and renewable systems without the responsibility of owning, maintaining, or paying for the equipment upfront. A third-party Energy as a Service provider assumes the risk, overseeing and financing the energy project from start to finish. Some also offer ongoing monitoring services using smart meters, providing valuable insights into additional energy-saving opportunities and simplifying sustainability reporting for ESG and climate disclosure compliance.
The EaaS provider is then reimbursed through shared savings in the form of a monthly service fee, similar to a utility bill, paid by the building owner during the length of the EaaS contract. These practical, risk-mitigated service contracts are highly flexible, typically lasting 5 to 20 years, and customized to your unique business requirements.
Unlike an Energy Service Company (ESCO), EaaS allows you to upgrade your building infrastructure (such as HVAC, lighting, solar, and EV chargers) in a way that can be treated as off-balance sheet, enabling rapid scalability across entire portfolios. EaaS companies are also not tied down to a specific technology or supplier so you have the freedom to choose the optimal solution that best fits your needs. By leaving the energy projects to the experts, you can free up valuable resources to focus on your core business while enjoying the added benefits of building resiliency, energy security, and sustainability.
Ready to learn more? Keep reading to find out if EaaS is the right solution for your business’ evolving energy needs.
Typical challenges solved by EaaS
EaaS’ unique financing model allows companies to quickly implement and scale energy efficiency and renewable energy systems across their entire portfolio. By outsourcing the management, ownership, and maintenance of these assets to an energy management company, organizations can tackle outstanding challenges, such as:
Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Address long-overdue maintenance issues
Enhance building resilience
Free up valuable staff and monetary resources
Comply with the latest regulations and climate disclosure laws
What does the innovative EaaS process look like ?
The journey with Redaptive starts by understanding your priorities, evaluating your energy assets, reviewing readily-available data, and interactively identifying potential energy savings and renewable energy solutions.
Once initial opportunities are agreed upon, onsite audits may be completed to quantify and solidify opportunities, along with refining objectives and defining metrics-based success criteria.
Next, we’ll iteratively review with you the variety of program opportunities uncovered, potential financial outcomes, and flexible contracting strategies all of which are tailored to your company’s objectives for energy and cost savings, maintenance optimization, and decarbonization goals.
As a vendor agnostic organization, we will then work directly with your preferred vendors and/or our partners to install your defined solutions, often at multiple sites simultaneously, significantly accelerating time to savings and other success metrics.
Our proprietary smart meters are installed to monitor performance, verify savings, and identify maintenance and performance opportunities. These insights are easily exported for ENERGY STAR and GRESB reporting.
A variety of O&M options are tailored to the preferences of each client throughout the full-lifecycle of the contract term; Redaptive also assumes operational and maintenance risk should, as desired.
EaaS for achieving corporate sustainability goals
EaaS streamlines rollouts and rapidly expands efficiency and renewable energy initiatives to maximize your decarbonization impact when applied across all of your buildings.
By joining this EaaS program, you can reduce Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions (and possibly Scope 3, if your suppliers are involved).
Give facility managers more room in their budget by allowing the EaaS provider to cover expenses.
With IoT smart metering, businesses can access detailed asset-level electricity, gas, and water data that goes beyond what utility bills provide.
Consolidate real-time energy data into one centralized platform to simplify ESG reporting and ensure climate disclosure compliance.
Advantages of Energy as a Service
EaaS offers many benefits for customers seeking to upgrade their buildings with the latest energy efficiency and renewable energy systems, such as:
Save Money
Zero upfront capital
Modernize and standardize your energy equipment without any upfront money or loans, by structuring contracts as operating expenses with variable payment options.
Reduce maintenance costs
Mitigate reactive maintenance expenses and costly, disruptive downtime events.
Immediate energy savings
Start saving instantly with select energy efficiency services and renewable energy measures, cutting down on long-term utility bills and reducing ongoing maintenance costs to improve your bottom line.
Free up additional resources
Don’t allow limited resources and expertise to stop you from implementing complex energy efficiency projects. With EaaS, the energy service partner becomes an extension of your internal team, managing everything from the energy audit and installation to the maintenance of the equipment throughout the contract’s duration.
Heighten energy rate security
Decrease your energy consumption and lock-in fixed utility rates that can save your company millions with skyrocketing utility costs.
Customizable contract terms
Embrace simple, flexible financing to support various technologies across different locations with shorter, negotiable terms that rely on performance-based payments.
Save Time & Resources
Streamline energy efficiency projects
Enjoy comprehensive project and energy management services from start to finish. This makes portfolio-wide upgrades easier, reducing administrative tasks and allowing you to concentrate on your main business.
Free up additional resources
Don’t allow limited resources and expertise to stop you from implementing complex energy efficiency projects. With EaaS, the energy service partner becomes an extension of your internal team, managing everything from the energy audit and installation to the maintenance of the equipment throughout the contract’s duration.
Accelerate decarbonization outcomes
Boost outcomes and rapidly scale corporate sustainability initiatives with low-carbon strategies, helping you achieve your decarbonization targets more quickly. Safeguard your business’ future and maintain competitiveness as a forward-thinking leader in your industry with EaaS.
Mitigate risk
Experience variable savings through a performance-based approach, enhancing reliability, resiliency, and energy security.
Simplify ESG reporting
Use advanced data analytics to measure and report on ESG goals and climate disclosure with improved transparency through EaaS data solutions.
Enhance customer experience
Improve the comfort and convenience of your customers with upgrades such as EV chargers, heat pumps, and smart building energy management systems.
Increase Sustainability Impact & Reporting
Simplify ESG reporting
Use advanced data analytics to measure and report on ESG goals and climate disclosure with improved transparency through EaaS data solutions.
Accelerate decarbonization outcomes
Boost outcomes and rapidly scale corporate sustainability initiatives with low-carbon strategies, helping you achieve your decarbonization targets more quickly. Safeguard your business’ future and maintain competitiveness as a forward-thinking leader in your industry with EaaS.
Immediate energy savings
Start saving instantly with select energy efficiency services and renewable energy measures, cutting down on long-term utility bills and reducing ongoing maintenance costs to improve your bottom line.
Gain valuable energy insights
Obtain asset-level energy data and analytics for verified M&V and performance assessment using IoT electric, gas, and water meters that provide real-time, granular, and accurate data visibility.
What are some examples of Energy as a Service projects?
Lighting usually represents up to 15% of the total energy used in commercial and industrial buildings. Install high-efficiency LED lighting and controls to reduce energy and maintenance costs, while also contributing to broader GHG reduction goals.
Building Management Systems (BMS) are smart building control systems that monitor power, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, and indoor air quality. Yet, setting them up can be expensive, averaging $2.50 to $7 per square foot. EaaS provides complete funding, design, installation, and management of the BMS system throughout the EaaS contract.
On-site solar power generation is rapidly growing in the commercial and industrial sectors. Scale solar and storage projects across multiple sites with an EaaS company handling funding, installation, and project management end-to-end.
Infrastructure management
Around 40% to 65% of HVAC equipment in commercial real estate portfolios is beyond its useful life, resulting in expensive drops in performance. Another reason to upgrade aging equipment is to meet regulatory requirements, like phasing out R-22 refrigerants in air conditioning units and meeting local decarbonization laws. lmprove building resilience, occupant comfort, and achieve sustainability goals by upgrading HVAC and/or central plant equipment, such as air handlers, boilers, and chillers, to the newest and most efficient technology.
Heat pumps are up to four times more efficient than traditional gas boilers, providing both heating and cooling using electricity instead of fossil fuels. EaaS streamlines the entire funding process of the intricate mechanical and plumbing infrastructure required for installing heat pumps across portfolios, using a simple, pay-for-performance subscription model.
On-site solar power generation is rapidly growing in the commercial and industrial sectors. Scale solar and storage projects across multiple sites with an EaaS company handling funding, installation, and project management end-to-end.
Sustainability
Revamp and optimize your operations by accessing detailed energy consumption data through our SaaS platform, Redaptive ONE. This all-inclusive data solution delivers real-time energy and water consumption analysis while highlighting energy efficiency and sustainability opportunities. This is made possible with our IoT metering technology that uses an AI-driven platform for monitoring, maintenance, and performance tracking.
With the growing use of electric vehicles, companies must prepare to accommodate customers and employees by installing EV chargers. With the “Charging as a Service” model, your EaaS provider can manage all aspects of complex EV charging infrastructure planning, deployment, financing, and ownership across your facilities. This seamlessly integrates EV solutions with other energy improvement upgrades without any initial investment.
Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), also called renewable energy certificates, represent the environmental attributes of renewable energy generation. They are generated when one megawatthour (MWh) of electricity is produced from a renewable energy source, such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, or biomass. Obtaining Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) helps accelerate the path towards a company’s 100% renewable procurement goals and ESG compliance. Redaptive’s expertise in scaling energy projects across distributed real estate portfolios and streamlining the RECs purchase process simplifies this journey for customers.
What types of businesses are using EaaS?
EaaS caters to a wide variety of industries, from those managing a single building, campus, or an extensive real estate portfolio. Here are some examples of sectors that can make the most out of EaaS:
Industrial & Manufacturing
Industrial & Manufacturing
The Industrial and Manufacturing sector, known for its long operating hours (often 24/7) and expansive facilities with high ceilings, faces unique energy efficiency challenges that EaaS can effectively address.
Real Estate
Real Estate
REOs and REITs oversee diverse income-generating properties and are now integrating ESG and GRESB scores into investment criteria. To streamline data collection, they’re exploring “shadow meters” for tenant energy insights.
Healthcare
Healthcare
Healthcare facilities and hospitals can’t risk their facilities degrading or losing power. Energy as a Service solutions offer resiliency and patient safety through an affordable program.
How to choose an Energy as a Service company
Energy as a Service companies, like Redaptive, cover the initial costs associated with building energy improvements and use sensors and data to showcase the long-term benefits. When selecting an EaaS provider, it’s best to consider the following factors:
- Proven track record and expertise
- Technology and vendor-agnostic
- Capacity to handle large portfolios
- AI-enabled IoT smart meters and digital platforms
End-to-End Energy Efficiency
Connect with us to explore options to meet corporate sustainability goals for commercial building portfolios or medical, university, or industrial campuses.