ABB’s LevelTen Investment Points to a New Role for Industrial Energy Management

Decarbonisation is not only about the installation of solar panels or renewable energy certificates for industrial businesses. The more difficult one is how to ensure adequate clean energy, at a competitive cost and time, when factories and commercial facilities are still operating in a reliable manner.

ABB has entered into a strategic relationship with the clean-energy transaction platform, and has also acquired a minority stake in the company, with the aim of expanding its electrification and energy-management services to the procurement of renewable energy. 

LevelTen adds a new component. It has a platform for linking buyers to renewable energy projects and facilitates energy transactions such as power purchase agreements (PPAs), capacity, energy attribute certificates and storage. The company has helped close over 20 GW of clean-energy transactions in over 35 markets in North America and Europe. 

Strategic fit is pretty easy. ABB already collaborates with the industrial and commercial customers on electrification, automation, energy management, micro grids and battery storage. The ability to provide procurement services opens up the possibility of delivering a wider range of services to customers to cover the entire energy journey, from demand understanding and energy efficiency to sourcing renewable electricity and ongoing performance monitoring.

That’s important because clean energy procurement is getting more complex. In addition to the quantity of renewable electricity companies are buying, they are also more concerned with where and when it is produced. To meet this change, LevelTen has been working on tools focused on PPAs, storage and more fine-grained ways of matching clean-energy resources with demand. 

The Asia-Pacific aspect is there too. The market has seen a rise in interest from companies that have manufacturing in places like India, Japan and South Korea, noted by LevelTen.  The partnership may have implications for ABB, whose industrial customer portfolio is well entrenched in these markets and makes the move strategic as energy-intensive industries in Asia seek more practical ways to decarbonise.