Emrgy Inc.

At a Glance

Industry

Energy or Utility

Project Types

Clean and Renewable Energy, Data Analysis, Financial Evaluation and Planning

Year

2024

Location

Summary

Wes helped Emrgy, a Series A funded venture startup, explore innovative monetization pathways for their renewable energy and water conservation projects.

Goals

Emrgy is a clean energy technology company that designs, builds, and deploys distributed hydrokinetic power systems to harness latent energy from existing waterways and infrastructure. Wes spent his summer investigating how Emrgy might conserve water via canal infrastructure upgrades and thereby enhance project financials by 1) increasing hydrokinetic generation revenues and 2) monetizing Volumetric Water Benefits (VWBs). VWBs enable businesses to support water conservation initiatives by investing in specific projects and receiving an entitlement to some share of the VWBs generated by the project. The VWB marketplace is nascent but growing and could represent a significant future revenue stream for Emrgy.

Solutions

Wes structured this project into three distinct subcomponents: Market Research: Wes engaged with subject matter experts and inventoried existing company conservation efforts to identify high-potential VWB buyers. From this research, Wes developed market sizing estimates for VWB marketplace (using TAM/SAM/SOM methodology) to demonstrate the high-level financial opportunity that this nascent market represents. Geographic Exploration: To assess the unique opportunities and drawbacks presented by various geographies, Wes aggregated location data for potential VWB partner company operations and overlayed those addresses with prospective Emrgy projects to identify high-potential colocation opportunities. Wes also researched state-level water conservation grant opportunities that could supplement VWB monetization in some regions. Financial Modeling: Using inputs derived from market research, Wes developed a dynamic financial model that would isolate the impact of canal lining on project financials to quantify the benefits stemming from increased generation. Wes then conducted sensitivity analyses to determine under what conditions lining projects would provide an optimal ROI.

Potential Impact

Wes developed a 25-page business report documenting key findings, limitations, and next steps stemming from this research. He also created a composite scoring system to assess upcoming Emrgy projects in terms of viability for successful VWB monetization. Finally, he synthesized takeaways into short, medium, and long-term strategies for Emrgy to consider as they explore these first-of-a-kind projects. Successful implementation of five pilot canal lining projects could conserve more than 9k acre-feet of water annually and support roughly 1.2k incremental MWh of renewable energy due to improved generation potential. These pilot projects would represent the tip of the iceberg for the future dual environmental benefits in terms of water stewardship and clean energy generation from Emrgy's target universe of hydrokinetic installations.

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