POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Not long ago, companies could benefit from public goodwill merely by talking about or promoting environmental messages. No more. Environmental responsibility and sustainability are now table stakes across industries and throughout the country, and the distinction between well-placed buzzwords and meaningful action is becoming more clear to more people.
Not only are consumers looking for businesses that share their values, they’re also actively searching for long term relationships with organizations that they believe to have longevity. That staying power can be made apparent by business moves and partnerships that not only prioritize ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) considerations but actively announce a commitment to it. Just last year, Venture Capital firms invested 9 billion dollars in technology that was touted as sustainable and 93% of CEOs believe that consumers will hold corporations accountable for their environmental contribution whether it be positive or negative.
You might as well make it positive.
Making business decisions that are good for the environment doesn’t just look good in a press release, it offers benefits and risk-reduction that last long-term. Products or services marked as “energy efficient” very often see a high return on investment for business whether they be lighting upgrades or HVAC controls and boiler conversions or a transition to low emissions fuels. Simply, as energy efficiency increases, both user and producer financially benefit.
The obvious indirect benefit, of course, is the reduction of man-made climate change. Climate change is poised to continue wreaking havoc across industries and contributing directly to the myriad unforeseen business costs including skyrocketing insurance premiums due to natural disasters, grid blackout losses, upstream supply chain disruption, and increasing healthcare premiums just to name a few.
Now there are plenty of ways that businesses can invest in a sustainable future for their business and the world in a way that generates a positive environmental impact and/or offsets a negative one. But such actions and commitments are, more often than not, ongoing processes rather than discrete decisions. By partnering with Catalyst Power, businesses are outsourcing one of those environmental initiatives to a third party energy supplier who can help reduce your carbon footprint while also legitimately investing in an organization that supports + contributes to additionality.
You reap all the PR, financial, and environmental benefits of being an eco-friendly business without needing to do additional legwork. Switching to an environmentally aware third-party supplier like Catalyst Power for your energy is a future-oriented solution in every single way.
IMMEDIATE SAVINGS
You don’t need us to tell you why immediate savings are a good thing. It’s in the name! You have more money, quickly.
Making long-term business decisions often means betting on the come. That is, implementing sweeping changes and then monitoring the outcome in order to evaluate success. And while in some cases, immediate savings implies higher costs down the road, in other instances, they represent the swift and steady reward for making necessary, smart changes.
When it comes to energy, hosting a Connected Microgrid project will undercut a business’s electricity costs and generate immediate savings. While there’s nothing to be done about certain non-bypassable charges, joining a Connected Microgrid will initiate immediate savings on all per kwh charges (from your supplier - that’s us! - and your utility). In many situations, particularly when using a dispatchable generator, there is an opportunity to save on per kw charges as well.
Businesses who aren’t yet ready to commit to a Connected Microgrid solution can enroll in Community Solar and subscribe their business to a local solar farm. The immediate savings start as soon as the farm begins creating solar energy and adding it to the larger grid. Each business enrolled in Community Solar will promptly begin receiving solar credits that will directly reduce your energy bill by approximately 10% every single month.
Catalyst Power offers customers the chance to implement a Connected Microgrid solution or enroll in Community Solar and immediately reap the rewards of cost savings. Beyond that, Catalyst Power solutions empower our customers to make a positive environmental impact, protect businesses from outages, and benefit from long-term budget certainty.
BUDGET CERTAINTY
It is easier to build a house on a solid, consistent foundation. Unexpected dips or elevations affect the stability of the entire structure and make expansion, improvement, and adjustment inherently risky endeavors. The same is true with building a business. Without budget certainty, your bottom line is vulnerable to variation and makes long-term preparation and projection both difficult and unreliable.
As more and more businesses purport and attempt to be ‘Future Proof,’ identifying areas of constancy is becoming mission critical. Budget certainty is a necessary component of expansion and modernization efforts. A business confident in their overhead costs is free to experiment and take other calculated risks without sacrificing peace of mind.
With energy specifically (as businesses become more electrified, the more important this becomes), there are two sides to each utility bill: the commodity (supply) side and the transmission and distribution (utility costs) side. The supply side is market based and therefore, theoretically just as likely to rise and fall in the future as it is in the past. On the transmission and distribution (T&D) side, the actual utility cost —that is, the cost of reliably maintaining the electricity distribution system— goes up practically every year in nearly all territories. The combination of fluctuating costs on the supply side and increasing costs on the T&D side makes it prudent for businesses to lock in a portion of their supply to a long-term contract.
At Catalyst Power, we offer our customers the opportunity to secure the terms of their Power Purchase Agreement for the duration of their contract with us. The price you sign on for is the price you pay. And with our 100% online sign-up process, you’ll be able to lock in that rate without the rigmarole of a broker relationship.
OUTAGE PROTECTION
The thing about outage protection is that most people don’t realize how important it is until they need it (and don’t have it).
From the polar vortex of 2014 to the Texas outages of February 2021, there are countless examples of the impact of natural phenomena on energy supply and distribution. Cold weather burdens power generation on almost every level: gas, coal, nuclear power plants, etc. And these extreme events lead to outages as well as extreme price volatility. During the polar vortex of 2014, wholesale prices reached $5,000 per megawatt hour and average electricity prices were 40x their average price.
In the Texas Energy Crisis of 2021, wholesale electric prices got up to $9,000/megawatt hour. In each case, many utility companies elected to pass those cost increases on to their customers and many of the companies who couldn’t (due to contracts that protected customers from this behavior) were forced to declare bankruptcy.
Both events also resulted in extreme and far-reaching power outages, the economic implications of which are still being tabulated, even years later. Particularly in Texas, politicians sought, disingenuously, to blame renewable energy sources for the blackouts when, in reality, the major cause of outages was the stalling of natural gas delivery to fossil-fuel-burning power plants.
As climate change continues to progress, these types of cold weather events will become more frequent (unless we do something major about climate change - HINT HINT). Businesses should be aware of their options for protecting themselves against this type of price volatility and vulnerability to outages.
When your business joins a Catalyst Power Connected Microgrid, we install solar panels or a gas generator on your property. We build, own, and operate the equipment at no up-front cost to you, while your connection to the greater grid protects your business from the whims and shortcomings of the corporate energy sector.
Our signup process is quick but the installation process takes about 6-12 months, so it’s important to be ahead of the next peak season and start thinking about outage protection as soon as possible. Don’t be that guy or gal who waits until after the break in to get an insurance policy. Let Texas’ failure become your preparedness.
