In the spirit of the COP 30 Presidency’s call for a global mutirão – a collective effort to mobilize climate action – the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) will lead a business delegation to COP 30 in Belém, Brazil that will bring forward credible solutions, partnerships, investments, and ideas to accelerate the energy transition and decarbonize agriculture, buildings, industry, and transportation. This case study is part of BCSE’s Granary of Solutions to deliver emissions reductions, increase resilience, and meet energy transition goals worldwide.
Highlights:
- Sustainable Energy-as-a-Service financing spurred a corporate giant to undertake large-scale energy efficiency upgrades across 56 facilities
- Reduced lighting electricity use by 70% over two years, cutting 138,500 tons of CO₂ emissions annually – the equivalent of taking 14,461 cars off the road annually
- Innovative financing model enables companies and building owners to upgrade their energy equipment without upfront costs
Case Study:
With facilities in every corner of the United States, Amazon faced a complex challenge: how to design and implement energy efficiency upgrades across a sprawling enterprise where utility rates and landlord requirements varied widely. Adding to the challenge, the company wanted the project completed quickly – with little to no capital outlay.
The story
Energy efficiency upgrade projects offer plenty of challenges in their own right. But how do you navigate those challenges when they are presented at locations thousands of miles apart? How do you do the work quickly, in multiple tranches, with the consent and cooperation of the landlords who own the sites? And finally, how do you pull it off with zero capital expenditure?
Amazon – which is investing heavily in wind farms and solar rooftops and aims to power its global infrastructure with 100% renewable energy – turned to Metrus to help solve its energy efficiency upgrade challenge.
Scale, simplicity, and savings
Together with its Energy Service Contractor (ESCO) partner – Centrica Business Solutions – Metrus financed and implemented a groundbreaking programmatic Sustainable Energy Services Agreement (SESA) that allows our customer to blend the economics of different utility rates across regions to ensure that all sites are able to benefit from the efficiency upgrades. By combining sites where utility rates and operating conditions are more favorable with sites that have less favorable conditions, Metrus was able to make the projects economically viable and provide project uniformity across sites.
The upshot
Under this Sustainable Energy-as-a-Service program, Metrus has financed over $74 million of projects at 56 sites across the United States for Amazon. There have been eight project tranches in two years, with more projects underway. The rapid rollout across a far-flung operation provides a powerful demonstration of the scalability and flexibility of Metrus’ SESA.
The project will reduce total electricity use for lighting at these 56 sites by 71%, thereby eliminating 66,495 tons of annual CO2 emissions – the equivalent of taking 14,461 cars off the road annually.
The project earned an award for Finance Innovation from the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Amazon is committed to putting its scale and inventive culture to work on sustainability,” said the customer project lead. “The project with Metrus fit perfectly with our vision and enabled us to make our buildings more energy-efficient through a low- and no-cost process.”